Doppelgangland
by damnedscribblingwoman
Summary: All Hermione wanted out of her evening was to close up the pub in peace and quiet. That plan sort of went out the window when she was kidnapped by Draco Malfoy, who proceeded to drop a baby on her lap. Also known as the one that's almost but not quite a Muggle AU.
1. The Pub

**Originally written for H &V's If the Prompt Fits Challenge. The originally prompt was, "Hermione and Draco come face-to-face with an AU version of themselves." Warnings for depression, past suicide attempt and mentions of suicide.**

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"Kick them out," Ginny said, glaring at the boisterous group in the corner.

Hermione glanced at the unsteady form of Theodore Nott, perched precariously on the back of two chairs. In a fair world, he'd fall flat on his face, but the world wasn't fair and Nott had an uncanny sense of balance, even after four pints, half a bottle of sambuca and two whiskeys. He was a medical marvel.

"I've cut them off," she said, serving herself and Ginny a shot of tequila. "They'll get bored and leave eventually."

It was an hour past closing time, but Nott et al refused to be dictated to by something as pedestrian as a clock. They wished to drink and be merry, and drink and be merry they would, and neither closing times, nor the otherwise empty pub, nor the righteous wrath of Ginevra Weasley would get in their way.

"I have classes tomorrow," Ginny grumbled, taking the shot anyway.

"You can go. I'll close up."

Ginny played with the glass between her fingers for a few seconds, looking doubtful.

"Or we could kick them out," she said.

"You know what Charlie would say." That if rich playboys were happy to spend ridiculous amounts of money in his pub, he was happy to let them. Even after closing time.

"Then Charlie can drag himself down here and deal with this lot," was the mutinous reply.

"I really don't mind," she said, but Ginny didn't look convinced, because heaven forbid they'd leave her without a babysitter. Hermione loved her friends, but she was about ready to strangle them. "Get going," she insisted, smiling what she hoped was a reassuring smile — the smile of someone who did not need them to keep shadowing her as if she were about to slice her wrists the minute they turned their backs. 'Cause really, right now she was more likely to kill one of them than herself. "I have nothing going on tomorrow," she added with what she hoped was casual nonchalance. "I don't mind closing up."

"Well, if you're sure," Ginny said, still looking uncertain.

"I'm sure."

She was more than sure, she was eager. All she wanted out of life was to have five minutes to herself — five minutes without having to put up a cheerful facade so as not to freak out her already freaked out friends. Coming back to school had been a relief for all of half an hour, until it had dawned on her that Harry and the Weasleys were a worse bunch of mother hens than her own mother.

She liked the pub this late at night; she liked closing up. It was quiet — despite the ruckus made by people with too much money and too little sense. She didn't have to smile or pretend or make an effort. She could just be.

She was in the process of enjoying her little interlude when Draco Malfoy stumbled his way to the bar.

"Granger." Despite the slightly uncoordinated movements as he half climbed, half dragged himself into a stool, his eyes were sharp. "How's the nervous breakdown?" Malfoy didn't do eggshells.

"How's the sex tape?" Neither did she.

He smirked, reaching over the bar for the tequila. She whisked it away before he could grab it.

"That's old news." There was a hard edge to his smile that made Hermione wonder just how old. "Your comebacks are out of date."

"I'll be sure to add the Daily Mail to my reading list."

"Add the Sun. Much trashier."

"What do you want, Malfoy?"

He leaned over the counter, looking her up and down in a way designed to be shameless. "So many things, Granger."

Hermione's smirk was a mirror of his as she drew close to him until they were almost nose to nose, letting her eyes drop to his lips for a second. When she spoke, her voice was low and sultry, almost a purr. "What do you want that you're likely to get?"

Malfoy chuckled, sitting back. "One day, Granger." He glanced at the shelves behind her. "I'll take a bottle of your most expensive whiskey."

"I already told Nott we're past licensed hours. What made you think you'd be any luckier than he was?"

"Boundless optimism. And a much higher credit limit." He opened his wallet and tossed a card on the counter. "Charge whatever you want to that; I won't contest it. You'll be the highest-tipped waitress in the country. Just keep the drinks coming."

She pushed the card back towards him. "We're past licensed hours. If you want to keep drinking, go find a club."

Draco put the card away, his smile turned cold. "You'd have thought ending up in a psych ward would have taught you to make better life choices."

Still not as bad a choice as not listening to Ginny when she had told her to kick them out.

"I guess not," she said, her voice light and sweet. "But at least my poor life choices don't make front-page news. We're closed. Get out."

His smirk at knowing he had hit a nerve irked her more than his actual words.

She watched as they sauntered out, loud and drunk and entitled. Nott, the first one out the door, turned back just long enough to blow a kiss in her direction and inform her that he still loved her even if she was a heartless bitch who refused to give him alcohol. Malfoy rolled his eyes and pushed his friend out of the way, walking out with an arm over the shoulders of a woman dressed for a very different sort of weather than was likely in December. She wasn't the only one. All the women in the group seemed to share the same disdain for the rigours of the English winter. They were young and pretty, and not about to let something as insignificant as the odd degree below freezing get in the way of a well-planned outfit.

Blaise Zabini was the last one to leave. He strolled leisurely towards the door, his hands in his pockets and a slightly bored look on his face, an expression familiar to anyone who knew him. The world and all its wonders could not hope to impress Blaise. Though he had drunk as much as his friends, he alone among them looked completely sober. Pausing close to where she was, he fished fifty quid out of his pocket and dropped it on the counter.

"For your troubles," he said generously, handsomely, magnanimously. Zabini was a big believer in noblesse oblige.

Hermione rolled her eyes but resisted the urge to tell him what he could do with his fifty pounds. Much like Malfoy, Blaise believed money held the solution to all problems in life, but unlike Malfoy he did not give her a headache, so she was happy to take his tips in the spirit in which they were intended. Even if the spirit in which they were intended was the appeasement of peasants lest they revolt.

It was quiet after that, and Hermione took her time cleaning up. It was almost 2a.m., but she was in no particular hurry. She had no classes the next day, her faculty adviser, her therapist and her parents having all agreed a normal schedule would be detrimental to her well-being (as opposed to, say, an inordinate amount of free time in which to ponder all the ways in which she had managed to mess up her life), so she could sleep in. Not that she was likely to. Sleep, like so many other things — peace of mind and an ability to cope with the world around her chief among them — seemed to have deserted her of late.

And she hated that she kept replaying Malfoy's taunt inside her head. She hated that she was the sort of person who cared about the opinion of a spoilt, over-indulged, good-for-nothing prat. Or maybe it was the fact that him knowing meant everyone else did too. Her poor life choices might not make front-page news, but it was a small town and a smaller campus, and word travelled. She wasn't oblivious to the whispers and the curious looks, to the smiles that were just a little too cheerful, to the measured, careful words when people talked to her, as if they weren't quite sure where the safe ground was.

She wasn't quite sure where the safe ground was either.

Hermione sighed, putting away the mop. One day at a time. And Malfoy could go to hell. He was a foul, loathsome, mean-spirited git, and if he thought for a moment that—

She turned towards the main room and yelped, dropping the tray of glasses she had just picked up. They shattered against the floor, sending shards flying in all directions.

"Jesus, Malfoy. What the hell?" She took a deep breath trying to steady her heartbeat. She could've sworn she had locked the front door. "Don't just sneak up on people. What do you want?"

He did not speak for a moment, did not so much as move. He just stood there, staring at her with serious grey eyes, his expression unreadable. It took Hermione a few seconds to realise he looked wrong, somehow. Different. And it wasn't just the odd robes he was wearing, either, or the fact that his hair was longer than it had been not an hour ago. The lines of his face looked sharper, more defined, and there was a hardness in his gaze that hadn't been there before.

"You look just like her," he finally said, moving towards her with slow, careful movements. "I knew you would, but I never expected…" He paused for a moment. "You look just like her."

"What do you want, Malfoy?" She instinctively took a step back, before forcing herself to stop. She wasn't afraid of him. She refused to be afraid of him. He was harmless. Mostly harmless. And if not, there was a knife on the counter to her left; she could see it out of the corner of her eye.

"I won't hurt you, Hermione," he said, still moving forward, and she did take another step back then, because in two years of knowing her, he had never once called her that.

"We're closed." And then, because if she kept moving back it would be out of reach, she made a grab for the knife, except that suddenly the knife wasn't a knife anymore, it was a small rabbit, and Hermione let it drop to the counter with a screech, because what the hell, and it hopped away towards the sink. She stared at it, horrified, her breathing both too fast and not nearly fast enough, because the knife was now a bunny and Malfoy wasn't really Malfoy, and god help her, she was losing her mind.

"Hermione." He was right there, now, his body warm against her, his hand gentle where it touched her face, but she still couldn't look away from the stupid critter hopping around by the bottle of gin. Why was there a critter by the bottle of gin? "Hermione, look at me." His thumb brushed her skin, soothingly, and she finally managed to tear her gaze away from the rabbit and look up at him.

"Who are you?" Because that was a reasonable question. Because if he wasn't a figment of her imagination — and the jury was still out on that — he had to be someone, and that someone was most definitely not Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy did not go around turning cutlery into small mammals.

He smiled at her, a sad, small smile that softened the harshness of his features. "I'll explain everything," he said. "But not here. We have to go."

And before she could so much as open her mouth to object, the ground disappeared from under her feet.


	2. The Wizard

One moment they were there, in the pub, and the next the world changed and she was falling, except that not really. The whole world dissolved and twisted and then came into being again, a room spinning into existence around her, or maybe she was the one spinning, and it was all she could do not to fall flat on her face. Malfoy held her in place, arms protectively around her. And then he let go and she resisted the urge to cling to him, because that would be nonsensical and cowardly and undignified.

"Stay here," he said. "I will be right back. I need to get him."

"Get who? Wait."

But he was no longer there. He had been there not a second ago. She had been looking straight at him. And then he was gone. Poof. Magic. Except magic wasn't real, and people didn't just disappear like that, and knifes couldn't possibly be anything but knifes, certainly not small, furry creatures, and she had been in the pub just a minute ago, and where was she even? And if she didn't at least try to get her breathing under control she was going to give herself a panic attack, and maybe that was okay, because if ever there had been an occasion where a panic attack was warranted, this was it, this was very much it, except that wouldn't help anything, and in her experience panic attacks tended to just make everything worse, and she really couldn't deal with worse right now.

Hermione dug her nails into her palms, trying to focus. It was fine. She was fine. She could deal with this. Whatever this was. Maybe she had fallen asleep and this was just a really vivid dream. About Draco Malfoy, because her brain hated her. Or maybe her brain had given up on the whole connection to reality thing and had decided to amuse itself with a really impressive bout of psychosis. In which case, fuck you, brain.

Or maybe there really was a magical version of Draco Malfoy going around kidnapping people and bringing them to… To where?

She looked around properly for the first time, taking in the room around her. It was a loft — open and spacious, with a low ceiling and just one window. There was a bed against a wall, and numerous dusty boxes scattered about. It was the the sort of place one might take people to after kidnapping them.

Spotting the door, Hermione made towards it, but a noise made her stop dead in her tracks. She turned towards its source, only to find a baby staring at her from a crib set against the opposing wall. He — She? Hermione wasn't sure — babbled something at her and grabbed at the bars of the crib, using them for support as he got up on unsteady legs. He kept on babbling, a steady string of excited, chirpy noises. Letting go of the bars, he made grabby hands in Hermione's direction, managing to remain upright for a grand total of four seconds before falling back on his butt. A bewildered silence preceded the small whine that turned into a crying fit that seemed to fill the entire room, but even then Hermione was too stunned to do anything but stare.

And then, because it was that sort of a night, the boxes and furniture around the room started to vibrate and suddenly lifted off the ground, just hovering there like something out of _Poltergeist_. This was why they had told her not to mix alcohol with her meds.

"Okay," she said out loud. "It's okay." It was very much not. "Things are flying. Just… Things are flying." Moving towards the crib, Hermione picked up the crying child, who might or might not be a figment of her imagination, but in the off chance it was not, she was picking him up, because that's what you did with crying babies. You picked them up. Even if the world was going haywire around you. _Specially_ if the world was going haywire around you. "It's okay, baby," she said, rocking him back and forth. "It's fine. Gravity is overrated, anyway."

Little by little the crying subsided and the child sighed happily against her chest, chubby hands buried in her hair. The reality of him, warm and soft and heavy in her arms, was reassuring. The boxes remained stubbornly airborne, which was slightly worrisome, but as they seemed to be doing nothing but hover, she decided to simply ignore them. Denial was a valid coping mechanism. Right?

Just as her heartbeat was returning to normal, a crashing sound heralded the arrival of Draco Malfoy, in the company of Draco Malfoy, something she wasn't even going to question, because if she did, she'd scream, and she couldn't scream because a) the baby had just settled down, and b) she was not about to lose it in front of Draco Malfoy. Either Draco Malfoy.

"Sorry," said the Malfoy in the funny robes, letting go of his doppelganger, who fell back on top of one of the flying boxes, sending it crashing to the ground. "That took longer than intended." He walked up to her, making to pick up the child, but she instinctively took a step back, turning slightly so as to keep the baby shielded from him.

The man paused, a look of surprise on his face that quickly turned into a fond smile as he settled for stroking the head of the giggling child.

"Have you been causing mischief, you little monkey?" he asked, ignoring the muttered expletives coming from across the room. To Hermione he added, "He's too little to be able to control his magic yet." And then, as if it were the most natural thing to do, he took an overly-adorned stick from his pocket and waved it at the room like some sort of demented maestro, causing everything to float down that didn't belong up.

"Granger," said the other Malfoy, his words slightly slurred. "If this is your idea of payback, I'm calling it convoluted, and overblown, and my hat off to you." He pretended to tip an imaginary hat and almost lost his balance, to the undiscerning hilarity of the baby and the more discerning censure of his double.

"You're a bloody disgrace," Houdini Malfoy accused, waving his magic stick in the other man's general direction. A chair flew across the room, sweeping up drunk Malfoy, who slumped back on it with a surprised cry. "Drink this," he continued, grabbing a corked vial from a nearby table and handing it to the him.

"What is it?" Malfoy asked without pausing to think that taking mysterious drinks from strangers wearing his face was a dumb thing to do.

"It will make you sober."

Drunk Malfoy frowned at the vial, holding it at eye level. "Why would I want to be smaller?"

Malfoy Copperfield smacked him on the back of the head. "Sober, genius. Not smaller."

"Easy there, Alice," the other man said, uncorking the drink. "This is not the billionaire you're looking for."

Hermione wasn't even sure what the hell that was supposed to mean, and doubted either Malfoy did either. She watched with some curiosity as he drank something Tolkien might have called a potion, expecting something outlandish to ensue and feeling more than a little disappointed when nothing particularly remarkable did. Malfoy scrunched up his nose at the taste and for a moment nothing happened. And then his expression cleared, and he looked up at his double with a look that went from scared to furious in two seconds flat.

"Who the fuck are you?" He jumped to his feet, the chair falling back with a thud behind him. The baby started fussing in Hermione's arms, unimpressed by loud noises and yelling men, drawing Malfoy's attention. "What the fuck is that and what the fuck am I doing here?" He took a step towards Hermione, but the other Malfoy put a hand on his chest, causing him to stop short.

"Better," he said with a smirk. "Now we talk."

"Mate, you better remove that hand or I'm gonna remove it for you."

The smirk deepened. "No, you won't." He drew an arch with what the Brothers Grimm might have called a wand and the room changed around them. The boxes faded from view and the walls shot up and morphed, faded wallpaper turned into wooden shelves slightly bowed under the weight of heavy tomes. Long tables sprung up around them like mushrooms, and heavy chandeliers dropped from the ceiling.

The baby giggled and clapped with chubby hands as the room changed again, tables and shelves vanishing from view and the walls closing in around them and shooting away as the room turned into a corridor that went on and on until they couldn't see where it ended or where it began. It kept changing, faster and faster. It became a closet, a bedroom, a church. A ballroom with mirrored walls, a classroom with neat rows of desks, a garden where the night breeze sent a shiver down Hermione's spine. It was briefly a kitchen, small and warm and cosy, right before it turned into a dungeon, dark and sinister and full of shadows.

It kept turning and morphing and changing, and it was the most wondrous thing Hermione had ever seen. And maybe it wasn't real, maybe it was her brain's way of telling her it was taking a sabbatical — by putting her in a magical room with two Malfoys and a baby — but if that was the case, maybe that was okay, because whatever it was, it was absolutely stunning.

"Still think you can take a swing at me?" The room had finally settled into an imposing drawing room, with stone floors, and a massive fireplace, and paintings that were alive on the walls — moving and frowning, and muttering to themselves and to each other.

Malfoy — her Malfoy, the one as reassuringly shocked as she was — took a step back and stared at the room around him, his face deadly pale and his eyes impossibly big.

"This is…" His voice trailed off.

"Malfoy Manor." The other Malfoy moved towards the fireplace, flames flaring where before there was only cold stone. "Not quite how it is here, perhaps. But this is what it looks like in my world. Looked like. This is how I remember it."

"It can't be." He took a step towards the portrait of a blond young man that shared a family resemblance with the other portraits in the room and with the two Malfoys on the floor below, before turning back towards his double. "Who are you?" And the question no longer sounded like an accusation.

"I'm you." Just like that. As if it were self-evident. As if it made any sort of sense. "I'm mostly you."

"That's impossible."

"Not impossible. Just… difficult."

"Is this—" Hermione cleared her throat, willing her voice to stop shaking. "Is this real?"

Malfoy shrugged. "In a manner of speaking. The appearance of the room is an illusion. But the magic is real enough."

"There's no such thing as magic." She was like ninety per cent sure of it. Maybe eighty five, if she took the last hour into account.

"What do you want?" definitely-not-magical Malfoy asked, drawing his doppelganger's attention back to him.

"A favour."

And then he explained, though Hermione wasn't sure that something that involved the words "dark wizards" and "wizarding war" constituted much of an explanation. If Merlin Malfoy was to be believed, he came from a version of reality that was just like theirs in every respect, except that witches and wizards were real and lived in a secret, parallel society, unbeknown to all the non-magical people. So far, so improbable.

War had broken out when Wizard Hitler had tried to take over Britain, which had lead Gandalf Malfoy to join what she could only assume was some Middle Earth version of the Rebel Alliance. At some point while this was going on, Malfoy and a magical but clearly not nearly as discerning version of herself had managed to find enough leisure time to get her pregnant, and this is where she was calling bullshit.

"Well, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." And she hated that she could feel her face heating up. "I can buy the wizards and the universe hopping, but there's no way—" She stopped short, unsure how to finish that sentence.

Raistlin Malfoy chuckled and regular Malfoy snorted. "You should be so lucky, Granger."

She bit her tongue before she could ask wizard Malfoy if in his world he also made it a point to keep half the paparazzi and all the gossip magazines in the country in business by being the worst cliche of a rich playboy that had ever plagued a small university town. The baby tugged at her hair, and she shifted his weight to her other arm. He didn't look like her. Not really. His hair was dark, like hers, but the eyes were all Malfoy's.

"Where am— Where is she?" Where was that other Hermione that had a child and fought in a war and could see something worthwhile in Draco Malfoy?

Malfoy's smile fell and he looked away. "I don't know." He picked up one of the pictures on the mantelpiece, a finger tracing the people in it. "There was a skirmish in Gringotts — that's a bank. We were trying to get to the vaults. There was a magical item that we needed. Getting into Gringotts is never easy, but we had a solid plan. It had everything to work, except that they were waiting for us. They waited until we were inside and—" He cleared his throat, tearing his gaze away from the picture and looking Hermione in the eye. "It was chaos. There were curses flying, ricocheting off walls, people screaming, getting hit. We couldn't Disapparate because of the wards and we couldn't leave the way we had come in because of the Death Eaters. There were so many of them." He was still holding the picture, his shaking fingers white where they grasped the frame. "I lost track of her. One moment she was there and then I couldn't see her anymore.

"When the wards fell everyone started Disapparating, trying to get away, and I kept trying to find her, but I couldn't. I couldn't find her, and I swear to Merlin, Hermione, I would never have left you there. I would have let them take me before I did." There was something dark and haunted in his eyes, and Hermione could feel tears welling up in hers. "Pansy grabbed my arm and Disapparated us both. We were the last ones who made it out." He took a deep breath, putting the picture back on the mantelpiece. "She's not dead." There was a stubbornness to his tone, as if daring anyone to disagree with him. "They'd be rubbing our noses in it if she were. She's the most famous Muggle-born in the country; Potter's best friend. They'd be singing it from the rooftops. And if they captured her, they won't kill her. Not— Not straight away. She's too valuable a hostage and an even more valuable source of information. If they have her, they'll keep her. And I'm going to find her." His gaze fell on the baby dozing off in Hermione's arms. "But I need Scorpius to be safe. I need— I can't lose anyone else."

"So let me get this straight," waste-of-a-good-inheritance Malfoy piped in. "You went through all the trouble of travelling to a different — I don't even know, universe? — because you needed a babysitter?"

An infinite number of Malfoys in an infinite number of realities, and she had been saddled with the one who was a git.

"I travelled all the way here," the other man said, stalking towards his double, "because I need my son to be safe, and the safest he'll be is with his parents."

Malfoy did not flinch and did not back down. "We are not his parents."

"No. But you're close enough."

"Why us?" Hermione asked. If there was an infinite number of Hermiones in an infinite number of universes, there had to be other choices. Better choices. A Hermione who was smarter, more capable. Better. She wouldn't be anyone's first choice to look after a child. She wouldn't be _her_ first choice to look after a child.

"There is no magic here. What happened in my world can never happen in this one. He'll be safe here."

He stared at her as if waiting for an answer, and she nodded because what else was she going to do? Maybe she wasn't the ideal choice, maybe she was the worst possible choice, but he had tagged her and she was it. The baby sleeping in her arms was warm and soft and real, and Hermione, who had never lacked imagination, had enough of it now to imagine herself in the shoes of that other Hermione, who given the chance would also have turned the universe upside down to make sure her child was safe and cared for and loved.

Wizard Malfoy turned his gaze on his twin, who immediately shook his head. "Absolutely not. She," he said, pointing at Hermione, "can do whatever the bloody hell she wants, but I'll have no part in it. This is not my problem and you will not make it my problem. I—"

The other man closed the space between them, one hand curled around his wand, the other grasping the front of his double's shirt. There was electricity in the air, and regular Malfoy's eyes widened as he stared in horror at the wizard. He tried to pull away, but the other Malfoy kept him where he was with ease. When he finally managed to push off, his face was ashen.

"Stay the fuck out of my head," he said, out of breath. "Don't ever do that again."

His carbon copy merely smirked, straightening his robes. "You'll do it?"

"Yes, I'll fucking do it. Damn you to hell."

"You might just get your wish." The drawing room dissolved around them, leaving only the loft they had arrived at. Malfoy crossed to a corner by the bed and picked up a diaper bag. "Here are his things. I couldn't bring much. There are some clothes, some bottles and diapers. And this." He took out a small black album, which had the words "Scorpius Hugh Malfoy" engraved in golden letters on the cover. "It was Hermione's idea. She figured, with the war we couldn't be sure we'd make it, so she wanted to record everything, so he'd— So there would be something of us left." He put it back in the bag. "I'll come back for him. If I'm alive— If one of us is alive, we'll come back for him. But if not, give him that when he's older."

Hermione moved towards him and put a gentle hand on his arm, sympathy outweighing her misgivings. He smiled at her and then at the sleeping baby, leaning down to place a kiss on the child's head.

"I love you," he whispered. Straightening up, he leaned his forehead against Hermione's, his fingers warm and steady in the back of her neck. "I'll find you. Whatever else I do, I'll find you."

Hermione blinked back tears, willing herself not to cry. She didn't know this Draco Malfoy, she barely liked the Draco Malfoy she did know, and she was not about to shed tears for either one of them. Really, she wasn't.

Wizard Malfoy turned to the other Malfoy, handing him the diaper bag. "Take care of them."

Malfoy glared. "I said I would, didn't I?" was the less than graceful reply.

Draco Malfoy looked at Hermione and Scorpius one last time before drawing an arch in the air with his wand, and then he wasn't there anymore.


	3. Bradford House

Bradford House was an old Baroque building that had, at different points in its history, housed a Prime Minister, two foreign secretaries, one Chancellor of the Exchequer and a wealthy, if otherwise inconsequential, botanist. It had been home to serious, respectable people, who engaged in serious, respectable occupations. Respectability was in somewhat shorter supply now that Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini called it home.

Hermione had never been there before, nor did she personally know anyone who had, but stories of what went on at Bradford House were widely circulated around campus. Someone always seemed to know a person who had a friend, or a roommate, or a cousin who had served at, or been invited to, or been thrown out of one of the extremely exclusive parties Malfoy liked to throw anytime he was feeling restless — which according to the rumour mill was often. The tabloid press had to keep its stories somewhat plausible, if not necessarily accurate or truthful, but no such constraints curbed the imagination of the student body, who revelled in wild tales of drug-fuelled orgies and ridiculous exploits that invariably resulted in the death of someone poor enough and obscure enough that no charges were ever brought against the rich and powerful hosts of these lively shindigs.

It made for entertaining gossip, but Hermione knew better than to believe most of what she'd heard. She believed enough of it, however, to question the wisdom of letting Malfoy convince her to bring Scorpius to what might have been characterised by many a former occupant of Bradford House as a den of vice and dissipation. It had taken surprisingly little persuasion to get her to agree to it, however, partly because she saw no alternative (she lived in a dorm), partly because she was still shaken from the events of the evening (magic was real, wizards existed, and there was an actual baby in her arms right now), but mostly because she was really curious (legendary den of vice and dissipation).

Bradford House turned out to be remarkably unremarkable, if terribly posh. There were lots of tapestries, and expensive art, and furniture that looked as if it should have been cordoned off to keep the rabble from getting too close.

Malfoy led the way with purposeful, determined steps, stopping by a rather impressive staircase.

"Dobbson!" he yelled, marching towards an open door on the right side of the hall before turning around to stride towards the room directly across from it. "Dobb— Oh, there you are."

"You hollered, sir?" A lanky, middle-aged man in a dark purple livery walked out of a door designed to blend in with the wall.

"Yes. Granger, this is Dobbson, my manservant." He had a manservant. Of course he had a manservant. "Dobbson, I need the Orion Room turned into a nursery and I need it done yesterday. And be discreet about it. I don't want to read about it in the paper tomorrow."

"Yes, sir." His was the face of a man entirely unsurprised by having his employer showing up in the middle of the night with a strange woman and a baby.

"And prepare the Ladon Room for Miss Granger. She will be staying with us."

That startled Hermione out of her musings on the weirdness of her night. "What? No. No, I won't."

"You bloody well are." He dismissed Dobbson with an imperious wave of his hand. "You got us into this, so you're staying here and dealing with it."

"I got us into this? That is rich. You literally brought us this child. And I do mean literally, in the traditional sense of the word."

"Do not even try to pull that on me. If you're going to blame me for the other guy, might I remind you that you were the one who got herself kidnapped in freaking Neverland?"

"Excuse me if my being kidnapped was such a damned inconvenience." It sounded ridiculous to her own ears, but it had just been a really weird night.

"Inconvenienced does not even begin to cover what I'm feeling right now."

Their tone had risen steadily until they were both screaming at each other, which resulted very naturally and rather predictably in startling Scorpius awake. The baby, exhausted from being dragged across universes and having his sleep constantly interrupted by over-excited adults, made his displeasure known by starting to cry in a pitch that by all rights should have been inaudible to humans.

"Now look what you've done," Hermione said, trying to soothe the upset child.

"I was not the one being unreasonable."

"Do not even get started with me again. If you think—"

"What the devil is going on here?"

They both turned towards Zabini, who was walking down the stairs in nothing but a pair of trousers. Malfoy ran a hand through his hair, looking more than a little aggravated.

"It's complicated," he said.

Just then an expensive-looking lamp that had been resting very peacefully and lamp-like on top of a mahogany sideboard started to hover mid-air, quickly imitated by two elaborate chairs on either side of the room. Zabini stared at these happenings with no more than a raised eyebrow. When he spoke, his voice was carefully measured.

"Give me the cliffs notes version."

Malfoy opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before shrugging and pointing at Scorpius.

"Magical baby."

* * *

Draco had never, to the best of his recollection, been in the kitchen at Bradford House. He had never had any reason to. He could never have imagined that his first incursion there would be to provide sustenance for a child that was his, except that not really, except that kind of.

It was lucky that Other Draco had thought to pack some baby formula, and luckier even that Blaise knew how to prepare a bottle, because he certainly didn't, and he had no reason to suppose Granger could either. Why or how Blaise had such knowledge was a question for another day. A day less filled with insanity, and universe-hopping wizards, and babies that made furniture levitate when upset.

Scorpius had finally quieted down and was now happily drinking his milk on Granger's lap. She looked exhausted, a worried frown on her face as she looked at the baby, and something like concern coiled inside him. He buried the feeling, wishing he could strangle his double.

He could still see it now, could still feel the torrent of foreign memories and feelings flooding his brain, things that felt real and urgent and his, because in a way they were — Hermione smiling at him across the dinner table at the Burrow. The rush of adrenaline when he kissed her for the first time, daring and reckless and drunk from victory after a rare win in a war of too many losses. Her body alive under his, warm and soft and welcoming. Her breath against his skin, soft sounds whispered in the dark. Scorpius in his arms for the first time, tiny and miraculous and perfect. The overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling of panic when Pansy Apparated them in Grimmauld Place and Hermione wasn't there, had never made it there, would not make it there, and he couldn't take a swing at Pansy, so he had taken one at Potter, who had kept him from going back for her, who had reminded him he had a son to think of. The crushing heartbreak when he Apparated at the pub and saw her, this Hermione who was almost but not quite a perfect copy of his Hermione and who looked at him as if he were a stranger.

The other guy's thoughts bled into his, filling his mind with heartbreak and longing and other things that did not belong there, and it made him want to scream, if only he could decide at whom.

"You agreed to this charade," he said, making an effort to keep his voice low to avoid having anything levitate in a room full of sharp objects. "You don't get to just cut and run now."

"I'm not." Her gaze met his, her tone as perfectly measured as his. "It doesn't mean I have to live here."

"Oh yes, it does, because I sure as hell am not planning on losing any sleep over a crying baby. So congratulations, Granger, your life has just been upgraded. You're welcome."

"Now listen here, you arrogant, self-centred—"

"You two are giving me a headache." Blaise poured himself another cup of coffee, because somehow he also knew how to operate the coffee machine. "There are more pressing concerns than who sleeps where."

"Like what?"

"Like a paper trail. For all intents and purposes, that kid doesn't exist. What happens when someone starts asking questions? Or when he needs to go to the doctor? Babies need shots and check-ups, and child services tend to get very suspicious very fast."

Now he was the one getting a headache.

"If only," he said, looking straight at Blaise, "I knew someone who could take care of this problem."

Blaise chuckled, putting down his cup. "It will cost you."

"I can afford it. Make it happen."

"How exactly—"

"You really don't want to know, Granger."

Draco didn't want to know either. Mostly because he didn't care, as long as it worked. Who they had to pay off, whose arm they had to twist, he left that up to Blaise.

"Your room should be ready by now," he told Granger, who still hadn't agreed to stay, but who would, because Blaise wasn't the only one adept at getting what he wanted. "You should take him up and let him sleep." She raised an eyebrow at him but did not argue. Progress. "This is 'need to know' only. The three of us, Dobbson, plus whoever Blaise gets to take care of the paperwork. That's it. No one else needs to know he's even here. The last thing I need is the newspapers getting wind of this."

It was fine. It was going to be fine. He could hide a baby for a few weeks. No one had to know. And it was a big house. He didn't even have to see them, would barely even know they were there. Other Draco's little emotional blackmail might have dragged him into this circus, but it didn't mean he had to be involved. It was a big house. He would keep his distance and no one had to know. It would be fine.

When he came down the next morning, he almost ran straight into Ginny Weasley.

"Watch where you're going, Malfoy." She looked over her shoulder at the man who had just walked in from the street, carrying a suitcase. "Harry, do you need help with the books?"

"Ron is getting them from the car. We flipped a coin for it. He lost. 'Sup, Malfoy?"

"What the bloody hell are you lot doing here?"

"You should really mind your language around Scorpius." Ginny put down the bag she was carrying. "Babies are like sponges."

Just then Ronald Weasley walked in behind a box that covered most of him. "Little help here." Potter dropped the suitcase at Ginny's feet and went over to help. "Where to?"

"Up the stairs, second door on the left," Hermione said, coming down the stairs with Scorpius.

"Ma'am." Dobbson, the treacherous fiend, appeared out of nowhere. "Miss Lovegood asked me to inform you that pancakes will be ready in ten minutes."

"Thank you, Mr Dobbson. Malfoy, you're standing in the way."

Draco's scowl deepened as he stepped aside to let Potter, Weasley and their oversized box by. They were followed by the Weaslette, who picked up the bag she had been carrying and the suitcase Potter had brought in.

"Whatever happened to 'need to know'?" he asked Granger, who shrugged.

"You wanted me to move in. That means they need to know." She handed him the baby. "I need to go help bring the things from the car."

He glared at her receding form before fully realising that she handing him the baby meant he was now holding the baby. Scorpius smiled up at him, babbling something nonsensical and reaching up to touch his face. Draco instinctively smiled back before quickly replacing his smile with a frown.

"Your dad is a prat," he said.

"I've often said so, haven't I, George?"

"Very often, Fred. Nice house, Malfoy."

The twins walked past him with a couple of boxes, making faces at the giggling child, who prattled on at them and him. Whatever he was saying made about as much sense as anything that had happened in the past twenty four hours.


	4. The Album

Everything was quiet in the nursery that had been expertly if hastily prepared by Mr Dobbson. Scorpius was sound asleep in the crib in the centre of the room, untroubled by the chaos his arrival had unleashed. He was too young to know or understand the first thing about magic, or wars, or alternate realities. He was warm and well-fed and asleep, so everything was right with the world. Hermione envied that. She couldn't remember the last time she had been that small and oblivious. She could barely remember the last time she had slept.

She glanced at the balloon-shaped clock on the wall, the illuminated hands of which made it possible to tell the time even by the soft glow of the night lamp. It was almost 4a.m. She sighed, her fingers absent-mindedly trailing the shape of the letters on the cover of Scorpius's album. She ought to go to sleep. Babies did not care if their caregivers had ridiculous sleeping patterns. She wouldn't be able to sleep in the morning. A smarter woman would get up and go to bed, but smart had come and gone. Along with sleep.

It had been easier by the light of day to control the growing anxiety that threatened to drown her. The last twelve hours had been a whirlwind of barely-controlled chaos — dealing with her friends, dealing with Malfoy, dealing with a little boy for whom she was now responsible, and whose dumb idea had that been? She was barely able to be responsible for herself. In fact, considering the time in the not-so-distant past she had decided to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills as if they were candy, she had pretty much failed at being responsible for herself. That wasn't just her opinion, either, it was the general consensus.

That morning when she had made it back to the pub — at a time when she knew Charlie would be in, because she had left her key inside — _everyone_ was there and _everyone_ was freaking out. Harry was pacing back and forth, white as a sheet; Ron and Ginny were having a loud argument about Ginny leaving before Hermione the night before; Fred and George were setting out search parties, and Charlie was on the phone with the police. Harry was the first one to see her when she walked in.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" He looked about ready to murder her.

"I locked myself out. What's going on?"

"What's going on? What's going on?" Harry might have to fight Ron for the right to murder her. "Do you have any clue how worried we were? You disappear, there's broken glass everywhere, you don't pick up your bloody phone… What the hell is wrong with you?"

Hermione winced. "I'm sorry. I dropped a tray, and then I locked myself out and my phone is still here. Didn't think you guys would be this upset."

"You didn't— Oh that's great. She didn't think we'd be this upset. Did you hear that, Harry? We're just overreacting, we are. Why would anyone here be upset?"

"That's enough, Ron." Charlie put down his phone. "Hermione, you better call your parents."

"You went and called my parents?" She rushed to where she had left her phone the night before. "Unless you can physically see me dying in a ditch, do not ever call my parents."

"Technically we didn't." Ginny picked up a broom and started to sweep the broken glass. "We called our mum. She's the one who called your parents."

"Don't call your mum, either."

"Well, that's just unreasonable," George said. "We're doting, dutiful children. Doting, dutiful children should call their parents. Often."

"Honor thy father and thy mother," Fred agreed. "It's in the bible."

"You wouldn't want us to go against the bible, would you?"

"We value our eternal salvation."

"We value it greatly."

Hermione rolled her eyes at them even as she pressed the call button. Her dad picked up on the first ring. It was not a fun conversation, and one she could well have done without. It took over half an hour of reassurances to convince her parents that no, it would not be better if she took another semester off and came home, and no, she neither needed nor wanted them to come down for a couple of days.

She was fine and she was sorry she had worried them. Everyone was making a mountain out of a molehill. She had locked herself out; that was all. She was fine, she felt fine, she had never been better. Yes, she was sleeping. Yes, she was taking her meds. Yes, she was going to therapy. Yes, despite all of that, she still believed Brian May was the real star of Queen, and Freddy got undeserved sympathy points for dying.

No, she absolutely did not think this was a time for levity and she was very sorry for making light of it. Yes, she understood just how worried they had been. She was sorry. Very sorry. Terribly sorry. Had she mentioned she was sorry?

By the time she hung up the phone, she had started to consider the merits of asking Wizard Malfoy if she could come and live in the reality where evil wizards roamed the earth and there was an all-out war.

And that had all been before the truly fun part of her morning, which had involved trying to convince her understandably sceptical friends that a wizard from another universe had showed up out of nowhere and dropped a baby on her lap. To their credit, they hadn't thought she was crazy, though Ginny had suggested she should not have finished the bottle of Tequila by herself, and George had berated her for not sharing the high-quality drugs she was clearly on.

It would have been an almost impossible sell, if not for Scorpius's album. As it turned out, photographs that moved were pretty impressive, even before they got around to the fact that said moving pictures depicted, well, them.

There was a picture of a very young Hermione posing in front of an old-fashioned train, her arms thrown around Ron and Harry, who were waving at the camera. Next to it was a picture of Ron, Ginny, Harry, Malfoy, Bill, Charlie and one of the twins flying around an unkempt garden on brooms, because apparently that was something that happened in upside-down world. In a different picture, an oddly-dressed Mrs Weasley was seen supervising a pair of flying knitting needles, while Scorpius slept in a hovering cot next to her armchair. A whole page of the album was taken up by a large photograph with the caption, "Second Order of the Phoenix." They were all in it, waving and making faces at the camera.

"I think that's my Political Science professor." Ginny pointed at a scruffy-looking man, who had an arm around a woman with bright-pink hair.

"And there's mum and dad," Ron said.

"And Luna. And that's Seamus and Dean."

The picture showed people they knew, people they didn't, and people they had seen around, most of them wearing strange robes, some of them even wearing pointy hats. George grabbed the album and turned it towards him, frowning.

"That's odd."

"That one of you is missing an ear?" Ginny asked. "Yeah, it's a bit ghastly, isn't it?"

"That's not what's odd," Fred said, leaning against his twin and flipping through the pages of the book.

"There's only ever one of us."

Everyone fell quiet for a moment while the twins browsed some of the later pictures.

"Maybe the other one is taking the pictures," Ron suggested. "Which one of you is missing the ear?"

"I'm not sure. I think it's me."

That statement was met with nothing but blank stares.

"Fred. I'm Fred. Honestly, you call yourselves our family."

"Fred would've been my guess."

"Then your guess would have been wrong. I'm actually George. Credulous bunch, aren't they, Fred?"

"Like stealing candy from babies, George."

Ginny hit the twin closest to her over the head with a rolled up newspaper. " _You_ can't even tell for sure which one of you is in the pictures."

That had made them both stick out their tongue at her, which as arguments went left something to be desired, but they had all been happy to let the subject drop. They went through the whole album, remarking on the strangeness of it all, pointing out the people they knew, and wondering aloud about the lives that some version of them were leading in some version of reality. The twins had remained unusually subdued the rest of the day, hovering a little closer to each other than they normally did, turning often to make sure the other was in the room.

Hermione opened the album at random. It was too dark in the nursery to be able to tell much, but she could see enough to recognise the picture she was looking at. Other Hermione and Other Malfoy were sitting in a threadbare armchair by the fire, Hermione half on his lap. She was telling him something and he was smiling at her, soft and sweet. It was too dark too see the details, but she could remember the way he was looking at her, the curve of his mouth as he said something back before kissing her nose. It was a charming image of domesticity, and quite possibly the most bizarre thing Hermione had ever seen.

Fred and George looked at their likeness and saw both themselves and each other's absence. Hermione looked at the other Hermione and saw only a puzzle — foreign, distant and inscrutable — as removed from her as if she'd been a stranger. Only she wasn't a stranger, and that made it worse. Here was a Hermione who was everything she was not: smart, competent and resourceful, capable of handling a kid and a war, and god only knew what else. Meanwhile, Hermione was still trying to get the hang of dragging herself out of bed and to class in days when all she wanted to do was close her eyes and pretend that neither she nor the world existed. It was hard enough to feel like she had fallen short one too many times without having to deal with quite so uncomfortable a comparison.

She closed the album with a sigh and got up. Tea and bed. Neither was likely to improve anything, but maybe all she needed right now was tea and bed. She stopped by the crib, making sure Scorpius was tucked in, and grabbed the baby monitor before walking out, closing the door quietly behind her.

The house, which earlier in the day had been full and loud with the voices of her friends, was now silent and still. She made her way to the kitchen without bothering to turn on the lights, choosing her path with care. It was a big house, but not so big that she feared getting lost. Had that been a concern, she would have been glad of the light and muttered expletives that guided her the last stretch of the way.

"Stupid, useless, piece of crap. I have half a mind to donate you to goodwill, you ridiculous—"

"Malfoy, what the devil are you doing?"

He turned towards her, startled out of his disagreement with the coffee machine.

"Jesus, Granger. Make noise when you walk." He swayed slightly before leaning back against the counter. "The coffee machine is refusing to be a coffee machine."

Hermione bit back a smile, putting down the album and the baby monitor on the table. "How much did you have to drink?"

"Considering I've just acquired a baby and a bunch of Weasleys, not nearly enough."

She reached behind him, turning on the coffee machine and making sure it had enough water.

"They didn't teach you how to make coffee before they kicked you out of Eton?" She found the electric kettle and filled it with water.

"Harrow."

"Sorry?"

"They kicked me out of Harrow, not Eton. The amount of money Malfoy Enterprises donated to Eton, I could have torched the place and they wouldn't have expelled me." He sat down at the table, reaching for the album and opening it on the first page. It was a picture of the three of them — herself, Malfoy and Scorpius. Other Hermione and Other Draco were mock frowning at each other, the corner of their mouths curling up slightly before they both broke down laughing. Scorpius, which couldn't have been more than a few weeks old, was wearing a small red and gold woolly cap, and a green and silver scarf that was bigger than he was. "Do you think," Draco said after a few seconds, still looking through the pictures, "that if there's an infinite number of Dracos in an infinite number of universes, there's a universe in which I did get kicked out of Eton?"

"I think there's probably even one where you couldn't afford to go to Eton."

"Perish the thought. Thanks," he said, accepting the coffee from Hermione. "I bet there's a universe where I was top of my class at Eton."

"That seems highly unlikely."

"I bet there's a universe where _you_ were at Eton."

"They only accept boys."

"I bet there's a universe where they accept girls. I bet there's a universe where they accept nothing but girls. What's this?"

"Left-over pancakes." Hermione set down a jar of strawberry jam on the table, next to the pancakes, and fished a couple of forks out of a drawer. "To soak up the alcohol."

"You know, for a bartender," Draco said, grabbing a fork, "you're very disapproving of people who drink."

"Only of people who make a career of it."

"I bet there's a universe where we get along."

"We know of the universe where we have a kid. I think it's safe to say we get along in that one."

"I bet there's a universe where you think I'm a great guy."

"I bet there's even a universe where you _are_ a great guy."

Draco held up his hands to his chest, sighing dramatically. "You wound me greatly."

"You'll live."

"I dare say I shall, what with the money and the cars and the fame." He paused on a picture of a very young Draco wearing green robes and holding a broom. "Well, that's just bizarre."

Hermione grabbed a square wooden box from one of the shelves and took a minute choosing a tea. All the while, Malfoy kept on prattling about alternative universes. One in which he was a race driver, one in which he was a fighter pilot, one in which he rode a horse everywhere he went. A horse named Sebastian. There was bound to be a universe where he'd been to space, and a universe where he _lived_ in space. He was sure there was a universe where she had bothered to warm up the pancakes before feeding them to him.

It was a steady string of nonsense and she couldn't help but smile. The whole thing was still an unmitigated disaster, of course, but nothing seemed quite so dire when standing in the middle of the illuminated kitchen, with Malfoy's litany in the background and the smell of peppermint tea in the air. He suddenly stopped talking and it took only a second for Hermione to see why. The album was opened in a page entitled "Grandparents." On the right side was a picture of Hermione's parents, much like she knew them, much like they existed in her world. The picture was just a picture — normal and still and non-magical, slightly faded, slightly worn out as if it had been carried around and handled often.

On the opposite page was a picture of an adult Draco Malfoy and his parents. Narcissa Malfoy sat on an elaborate chair with a high back, flanked by her husband and son. All three looked proudly at the camera with their heads held high. Almost the only movement was the way Lucius's expression softened whenever he glanced at his wife and son.

Malfoy touched the edge of the picture, all humour gone from his face. "A universe where they're still alive," he said in a low voice.

Hermione moved to his side without pausing to think about it and placed a hand on his head, stroking his hair in a comforting gesture that came more easily than it should have. She didn't know much about his parents except that they had died a very long time ago, long enough that she didn't remember it being news. Malfoy leaned into the touch for a second before closing the album with a thump and getting up.

"Don't make that face, Granger." He smirked, letting the book fall on the table. "Them dying made me a very rich man. Though if you're really feeling bad for poor orphan me," he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her to him, "I know of a couple of things that would make me feel much, much better."

Once a prat, always a prat.

"You will let go of me this instant or I will stab you with a fork."

He chuckled, letting go of her and taking a step back. "So much for sympathy. Goodnight, Granger."

And with that he walked out, leaving her alone with dark thoughts and tea and a half-eaten plate of pancakes.


	5. Nan's Home Cooking

Blaise had always been the smartest person in any room he had been in from the time he was four years old. He had been a smart, precocious boy who had grown into a sharp, brilliant young man, and it was a mystery to him and to most everyone who knew him why he continued to live with Draco. It's not as if either one of them needed to share rent. The blame for that, as for so many other things in Blaise's life, could be laid squarely at Pansy's door ( _"Explain to me again why I'm doing this." "Because one of us needs to make sure he doesn't get himself arrested or killed, and Theo is the entire cheering section, so he's out." "I fail to see how it follows that it should be me." "Because if it's me, I'm going to end up murdering him, and I'm far too pretty for jail."_ )

Living with Draco had never been easy — not when they were both boys at Eton, not when Draco had dragged him half way around the world during their gap year, and not in the few years since they had both moved into Bradford House. Draco could be difficult, capricious and unpredictable, and was far too fond of baiting a tabloid press that had never needed much in the way of encouragement to become a bloody nuisance.

The last few years had been a trial for Blaise, but that was nothing compared to the last few days. His home — the stately, august building that had once housed the brightest minds of their time — had been overrun by peasants. It was bad enough that there was a baby in the house — though as sure as he was standing there, he was getting extremely tired of being woken up at all manner of uncivilised hours by the spawn of Narnia-dwelling Draco — but now not only did he have to contend with the barmaid Draco had insisted move in to take care of said spawn, he had to deal with all her friends, who, while not technically living there, certainly spent enough time on the premises that he should be charging them rent.

"Do you intend to do anything about this?" he asked, pointing at the drawing room, where two identical gingers were busy putting on a puppet version of Hamlet that would have had Shakespeare rolling in his grave, for the amusement of a baby who didn't know any better, and a different ginger and a bespectacled fellow were carrying on about a calculus problem that was manifestly incorrect from what little Blaise had cared to listen.

Draco stopped on the way to the door and glanced at the room. "Would love to, but unfortunately I have a class and I'm late."

"You don't go to classes."

"I'm trying to mend my ways. Personal growth. It's commendable, really. You should be proud."

"Draco—"

"Blaise, come." Luna Lovegood moved like the fay — silent and mysterious and never there until she was. She tugged at his sleeve and smiled. "Draco is trying to sneak out and he can't if you insist on paying attention to him. Come. We have pizza." They had pizza on the French Heritage coffee table. Such was his life now.

Knowing an opportunity when he saw one, Draco turned away and walked out before Blaise could redouble his efforts to get him to deal with things he was far happier ignoring. Draco might not be crazy about Granger's friends, but while they or she were babysitting, he didn't have to. It worked out great for everyone, even for Blaise. Zabini might complain copiously and loudly to anyone who would listen, but it had not escaped Draco's notice that his friend had taken to working in the drawing room instead of his personal study, particularly when Lovegood was there.

Draco did not complain — not to Blaise, not to anyone — but he wasn't around for much of it, either. He could deal with the Weasleys, and Potter, and Lovegood. He could even deal with the fact that any comparison between himself and the other Draco would always be less than flattering — he had, after all, lots of practice at being a disappointment.

What he couldn't deal with, as it turned out, was Hermione and Scorpius. And it galled him that that was the case. It irritated him that they got under his skin, that he looked at either one of them and cared. It irked him that his heart twisted in his chest whenever Scorpius was upset. It vexed him that he knew Granger spent most of the nights wandering the halls like a ghost, unable to sleep. It bothered him that he worried.

In a perfect world, he would have spent the last few days in a drunken stupor, too far gone to know or care that his devious doppelganger had put all these things in his head that had no business being there. That was, alas, not realistic, because while he could afford a drinking problem, he was pretty sure he didn't want one. So he was going to classes, because it got him out of the house and out of his head, and away from the circus that was now his life. It was the perfect plan. Denial was as valid a coping mechanism as any. It also had the advantage of keeping the paparazzi off his back at a time when he didn't want them sniffing around. Draco Malfoy passed out in a ditch made for good copy and better pictures. Draco Malfoy showing up for his Constitutional Law class interested no one but his Constitutional Law professor, who was still expecting it all to be part of some elaborate ruse.

By the end of the afternoon, he decided to continue his new-found thirst for knowledge by heading to the library. That's what normal students did, right? They went to the library and did research or studied or some such. He could absolutely do that. He had gone to classes; he knew things. He had books and a pen, and god only knew he had plenty of assignments due. Overdue. Going back years. That was bound to take a couple of hours, at least.

He was looking for a quiet corner when he saw Hermione sitting by herself at a table by the window, surrounded by textbooks and notebooks and papers. She was frowning at a large tome, the tip of her pen motionless against the notebook next to it. For a few minutes nothing happened, and then she flung the pen at the notebook and buried her face in her hands with a frustrated sigh.

It was his cue to leave, and a smarter man would have. A man with any sense of self-preservation would have, and he had been doing a stellar job of keeping his distance. But Draco had never been big on self-preservation, and he had more than a few gossip columnists to back him up on that.

Hermione looked up, startled, when he pulled up a chair next to her.

"What are you doing here?"

He picked up one of her textbooks, flipping through the pages. "Word on the street is that I actually have to do some course work if I want to pass any of my classes."

"And me thinking you could just pay off your professors." She grabbed the book back, putting it away on a pile just out of reach.

"I thought so too, but apparently the university's ethics board frowns on that."

"Will you stop making a mess?" She took back the copy of _The United Nations: A History_ he had just picked up. "I have a system. Stop screwing it up."

"My bad. Carry on." He emptied his book bag on the table, next to her.

"What are you doing?"

"Fulfilling my potential as a student of this school. What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Go pretend to work somewhere else."

"Granger, I resent the implication." He opened up his notebook, trying to decide which of his subjects seemed the least dull. "I'll be quiet as a church mouse. You won't even know I'm here." He could do quiet. He had done quiet on at least two separate occasions.

Seemingly deciding the best course of action was to ignore him, Hermione rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her task. They were silent for a few minutes. Draco opened up a book at random and started to read what he had no doubt was extremely exciting material on the history of the legal system. Really. Hollywood had nothing on it. He was engaged. He was interested. He was on the edge of his seat.

Hermione's hand fell on his, stilling the pencil he had been drumming on the table.

"Sorry," he said, letting it drop.

They were quiet again, but not five minutes had passed before Hermione sighed and put down her pen.

"I can't focus with you here. Please go away."

He kept his eyes on the inspirational tale of a small-time legal system that had gone on to conquer the civilised world.

"You didn't seem to be doing a great job of focusing before I arrived. It seems rather unfair to blame it on me."

"Malfoy—"

"Let's go have dinner." He closed the book. That was enough inspiration for the day.

"What? No. I'm working."

"You're not working. You've been staring at the same sentence since I arrived. Let's go. I'm hungry."

She bit her lip, looking at the paperwork in front of her. "I can't." He wanted to reach out and smooth the lines on her forehead; to nudge her chin so she was looking at him. He wanted to strangle Other Draco for being a meddlesome prat.

"You can. You just won't because you are unconscionably prejudiced against the one per cent. And let me tell you, I resent that." That got a smile out of her. "I am a lovely chap and I can produce character references to that effect."

She looked at him then, her eyes bright with humour. "Character references, is it?"

"Numerous. And only half of them forgeries. Two thirds, tops."

"I really should finish this." Her smile faltered, but she was no longer looking at him as if he were the anti-Christ, so that was progress. "And one of us needs to go home soon. Scorpius—"

"Scorpius has a small village looking after him. He won't miss us."

"What sort of parents—"

"We're not his parents." It came out harsher than he had intended, and he made an effort to soften his tone. "His parents are off being heroes somewhere. We're glorified babysitters, and he has lots of those. We can take an hour to go get dinner." She didn't look convinced, but Draco was nothing if not persistent. "Come on. You look about ready to set the books on fire, and I have it on good authority that schools tend to frown on that sort of thing."

Her smile had a wicked edge to it when she asked, "Harrow?"

He burst out laughing. "Yes, Harrow. Let's go."

"Fine." She got up, gathering her things. "But you're paying."

"I'm already giving you room and board. You're paying for dinner."

"Would you really make a penniless student pay for dinner?"

"Yes, I would. That's how the one per cent remains the one per cent. Through the shameless exploitation of the lower classes."

"You got that right."

* * *

Nan's Home Cooking was a small family restaurant that was popular with the university crowd because everything on the menu was both extremely cheap and absolutely heavenly. Everything on the menu was also likely to give them a heart attack by the age of thirty, but that was not something that tended to worry most twenty-year-olds. It was good, hearty food at low, reasonable prices, and Hermione was more than a little shocked that Draco knew it.

"I'm a regular 'man of the people', Granger."

"You have a Velazquez on your foyer."

"That's Blaise's. I was always more of a Goya fan myself."

It was too late for the lunch crowd and too early for the much smaller dinner crowd. There was no one in the restaurant but them and a lanky fellow who was splitting his attention between his shepherd's pie and a comic book open on top of Vol. I of _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

Malfoy hummed appreciatively when the waiter brought them their food.

"There's a universe," he said, "where you didn't come to dinner, and let me tell you, that Granger is missing out."

"That Granger is not terribly behind on her schoolwork." Or maybe she was. Maybe that Hermione had passed on dinner and was still behind, still staring hopelessly at a book that made less and less sense the more she looked at it.

She wasn't sure whether the notion that she might not be the most messed up Hermione Granger out there made her feel better or worse.

"As someone who's been behind on his schoolwork since he was six years old, my advice is not to worry too much."

"Some of us don't have a fortune to fall back on."

"Yes, I'm sure that if you fail a class you'll be cast out onto the streets and left to starve."

She rolled her eyes, focusing on her food. "I don't expect you to understand." No one ever did. Not really. Not her parents, not her friends, not the students who gave her sidelong glances in the corridors. When the walls closed in, they closed in on her alone.

His feet came up on either side of hers under the table, a steady pressure that was solid, and reassuring, and grounding.

"So explain it to me." He stole a fry from her plate.

It occurred to her that it was easier to deal with Malfoy when he was being a prat. For that she had a script. For this she was cast adrift, hoping she wasn't too far from land.

"Academic achievement," she started, trying to find the words, "is important in my family. My grandfather won a Fields Medal. One of my aunts is a Rhodes scholar. Both my parents have PhDs. Growing up, I was always sent to the best schools — schools my parents couldn't really afford, but they made an effort, because it was important. And I always did well. I worked hard, and I always did well. Because it was important. And then I came here, and suddenly I couldn't manage anymore." She forced herself to smile. It didn't matter. It was fine. She was fine. Everyone else seemed to manage, but it was fine that she couldn't. Really. "I guess I'm not as smart as I thought I was."

Malfoy's face was an unreadable mask. "Is that why—"

"I don't want to talk about that." She took a sip of her drink, trying to ease the knot in her throat. He increased the pressure on either side of her feet, not so much that she couldn't move them back if she wanted to, just enough that it was oddly comforting.

"Tell you what," he said, stealing another fry because he had no morals and even less shame. "We don't have to talk about it. But if you tell me, you get to ask me something in return. And let me tell you that my scandalous life has led to some pretty good stories."

Hermione snorted. "If I want to know about your scandalous life, I only need to open the paper."

"Well, sure, but they never get the good bits right."

She smiled, despite herself. What did it matter, anyway? It had happened. She'd have to be able to talk about it at some point.

"I couldn't— Everything was falling apart." She was no longer looking at him, because if she did she'd start crying, and what a pretty state she'd be in then. "It was— It felt like drowning. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think, I was barely eating, and— It seemed like a good idea at the time." A little peace. A little quiet. No longer having to worry. "Harry found me. He needed to borrow a book and he came in and found me on the floor." She didn't remember much, but she remembered how scared he'd been, how utterly panicked. She hadn't felt scared then. Just numb. Scared had come later. "In hindsight, it might not have been the best decision I ever made."

"You think?"

She gave him a look, but there was no real heat behind it.

"It's your turn, Mr Good Decisions. So, about that sex tape—"

Malfoy groaned, hiding his face in his hands.

"Not that!"

"You said I could ask anything. I was promised scandalous stories."

"I feel like I've been played. Fine. What about the sex tape?"

Hermione smirked, stealing one of his onion rings. "Some people think you were the one who leaked it. Were you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"That's two questions."

"Don't give me that. I told you what you wanted to know. Fair trade."

He sighed, putting down his glass.

"Fine. But only because you're all upset and pathetic." She threw a fry at his head, but couldn't stop the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. He got back at her by stealing yet another fry. "Daphne and I were together on and off for a couple of years," he said. "We were young and stupid, and really good at being bad for each other." His tone was light and easy, but his smile was brittle. "We argued a lot, because we were both jerks and not shy about showing it. One time we had a really bad argument — I don't even remember what it was about anymore. She got back at me by sleeping with Tom Riddle, who was the CEO of Malfoy Enterprises at the time, so I broke up with her. A while ago, she contacted me saying she wanted to get back together. I told her to take a hike. She said that if I didn't take her back, she'd send a tape of us having sex to every newsroom in the country."

"So you did it instead."

"Yeah."

She wasn't even surprised. It was just the sort of rash, self-destructive, devil-may-care decision she'd expect from him.

"That wasn't very sensible," she said only.

Malfoy shrugged, saying with a rueful smile, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Touché.

The waiter came by just then to check if they needed anything else, and Hermione asked for the bill. Village or no village, they should really get home soon.

"I propose a toast," she said while they waited, grabbing her glass.

"To what?"

"To making this one the universe where we get along."

"It's bad luck to toast with water." He picked up his glass anyway, smiling when he touched it to hers.

Hermione snorted. "Do you really believe in luck?"

"I didn't use to believe in magic either."


	6. The Room of Frivolous Entertainment

On the first floor of Bradford House there was a room that Mr Dobbson referred to as "Mr Malfoy's private parlour", that Blaise often denounced as a "juvenile, self-indulgent waste of space and money", and that Draco described to Hermione as having "a television that takes up half a wall, all the game consoles known to man, and more movies than anyone can conceivably watch in a lifetime. Next time you can't sleep just go there, and stop wandering the corridors like the ghost of Anne Boleyn. It's creepy and disturbing, and it messes up _my_ sleeping."

"How can it possibly mess up your sleeping? I'm quiet. There's no way you can hear me in your room."

"I hear everything, Granger. Scorpius is quieter than you, and he cries half the night."

And so it had come to pass that very often, after everyone else in the house was down for the night, Hermione could be found in what had once upon a time been a guest bedroom, where the likes of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (and if Mr Dobbson was to be believed, Nell Gwyn) had once slept. The thespians making an appearance these days were perhaps not as critically acclaimed, but Hermione was no snob.

" _Police Academy 2_?" Draco fell on the sofa next to her. "I'm embarrassed for you, Granger."

"Be embarrassed quietly."

"Why do you even have a movie on if you're reading a book?"

"I'm multitasking."

He leaned forward and turned the cover to check the title.

"You're watching _Police Academy 2_ while reading _War and Peace_? I don't even know what to make of that."

"I suggest you ponder the issue in silence."

But silence was not to be had.

"Do you think it might be easier to sleep if you multitasked a little less?"

"No."

"Do you think it might be easier to sleep if you were reading something other than complicated Russian novels?"

"No."

"No, you're right. Leo Tolstoi always put _me_ to sleep."

Hermione smiled despite herself, which Malfoy took as encouragement to continue being an annoying git who thought he was funny.

"Do you think there's a universe where a sleepless you is watching _Memento_ and reading something by Dan Brown instead?" Hermione grabbed a throw pillow and hit him over the head with it, but Malfoy only laughed, undeterred by either shame or dinosaur-shaped cushions. "Do you think there's a universe where you hit me with the book instead, and you're now wondering how to dispose of my dead body?"

"I'd just dump you in the river and let everyone assume you'd fallen in after a night out and banged your head." She closed the book, pulling up her knees and turning slightly, so she was facing Draco. "No one would ever question it."

"How would you even get my body to the river?"

"I'd get Mr Dobbson to help me."

"Dobbson would never. He's a loyal servant of the House of Malfoy."

"With what you put him through, I'm shocked he's never killed you himself."

"Nonsense, I'm a model employer. I even gave him a pair of socks for Christmas. Really nice socks, too."

"Well, if you gave him a pair of socks for Christmas, I see you have no reason to worry he'll ever be persuaded to help me hide your dead body."

They both looked at the table when the baby monitor suddenly came to life. Scorpius babbled something and sighed, before falling silent again.

"He's probably dreaming," Hermione said, settling back down.

"On that note, Theo and Abbott and Costello have met, and none of them should be left to babysit unsupervised. Ever. Specially not together."

"Fred and George are actually very reliable—"

"Fred and George are maniacs." He held up a hand, silencing her objections. "Don't get me wrong. So is Theo, and he's like a brother to me. A deranged, demented, less handsome brother who cannot be trusted with the welfare of small children."

Hermione sighed. "What did they do?" Because she had very little trouble believing they had done something, and that something had probably been dangerous and outrageous and hilarious. With Fred and George, that was usually the way the cookie crumbled.

"They found out that if you toss Scorpius up, he actually hovers for a few seconds before falling back down, so they were standing in a circle and tossing him to each other." Hermione covered her mouth with her hand, horrified. "Oh, he was loving it. He was laughing and waving his hands up and down. But he's seven months old, so I'm not exactly trusting his judgement on this one."

It was just like the time they had taught Scorpius to levitate things on command, but worse. At least then the worst thing that could happen was the worst thing that did happen, which was Scorpius breaking Blaise's Ming vase. She was still half expecting Fred and George to be the ones found floating in the river. If anyone could make it happen and get away with it, it was Blaise.

"I'll talk to them," she said.

"Do. I've already told Theo that if I ever find him playing 'toss the baby' with my kid again, he'll wake up without a kidney." Hermione quirked an eyebrow at his choice of words. "Other Draco's kid. You know what I meant."

She turned her attention to the screen, still smiling.

The baby monitor sprang to life again when Scorpius started crying. She made to get up, but Malfoy waved her down.

"I'll go," he said. "Need to go to sleep, anyway. The nursery is on the way. If you're going to be here all night, I beg you to choose something more dignified than _Police Academy 2_ next, because this is just sad." She threw a pillow at him, missing by a mile. He laughed, picking it up and tossing it back at her. "Violence is the last resort of the unimaginative."

She heard him walk into the nursery on the baby monitor.

"What's all this fuss about, mister? C'mere. Are you also upset by the shoddy attempt at comedy that is _Police Academy 2_?"

"Prat," she muttered, a smile on her lips. She grabbed _War and Peace_ from the coffee table, and settled more comfortably on the sofa.

It was like a holiday, like a make-believe life — surreal and outlandish and not meant to last — and she found that she did not hate it as much as she thought she would.

Sure, there were parts of it that still made her wake up at night in a cold sweat, her heart beating too hard, her breathing coming too fast, because she had no earthly clue what she was doing. She couldn't be someone's mother — she absolutely, definitely, without a doubt could not — and what would they do if Other Hermione and Other Draco never came back? And more to the point, what would they do if they did? _When_ they did? Because somewhere along the way, Hermione had started dreading the day they did, even as she panicked at the thought that they might never.

She was crazy about Scorpius. She adored the little boy who always looked for her when she walked into a room, who absolutely beamed when she smiled at him, who clung to her with tiny balled up fists and babbled back at her as if he could understand her, as if expecting her to understand him.

She wanted to protect him, and keep him safe, but mostly she wanted to keep him there, with her, with them. It was an ugly, greedy feeling and she hated herself for it. The other Hermione was gone — maybe hurt, maybe dead — and part of her, a tiny, treacherous, horrible part of her, was glad. Hermione didn't know what sort of person that made her, but probably not a very good one.

The silence of her dark bedroom would often scream at her the words she was able to silence during the day. Words like cheat. Impostor. Usurper. In those nights she didn't go to Malfoy's room of frivolous entertainment — partly because she could not make herself move, but mostly because she was a horrible person who did not deserve nice things.

She still dragged herself out of bed the next morning through sheer force of will, because there were things to do, and Scorpius to take care of, and it was one thing to be sad and pathetic in her dorm room, where no one was any the wiser, and a very different one to be sad and pathetic at Bradford House, with Mr Dobbson, and Malfoy, and — heaven forbid — Blaise Zabini for an audience.

So she made herself get out of bed and get dressed, and tried very hard to look human. Sometimes she even succeeded.

Those were the bad days, but there were also good ones. There were lots of good ones.

There were days when the house was full from morning to night with her friends — and a louder, more unruly bunch had never drawn breath. Theo and the twins got on like a house on fire, which was endearing and terrifying, and likely to sooner or later result in a house literally on fire. Blaise had hatred in his heart whenever he looked upon any of the three, but Luna was normally able to distract him from any murderous intentions with her unique Luna-ness, which to everyone's shocked surprise, seemed to work on Blaise. No one knew how. No one knew why. It just did.

Harry and Ron were engaged in a fierce competition to become Scorpius's favourite.

"I'm his godfather," was Harry's go-to argument, which in his mind made him the favourite by default. The fact that Scorpius's godfather was actually Other Harry was considered a technicality not worth mentioning.

To this preposterous claim, Ron invariably replied, "So? My godfather is my uncle Davey. Dullest man that ever lived. I'm funnier than you. Funny trumps godfather."

"I'm funny."

"You're really not, mate."

"You have a dry wit," George said.

"The driest," Fred agreed.

The argument would continue in a circular manner for hours, by the end of which Ginny would have had carried Scorpius off for an epic play session that involved puppets and mimicry and a light show (She was an Engineering major. She had ways.), thus turning herself into the de facto favourite.

Malfoy was no fan of this.

"I swear to god, Granger, next time the Weaslette riles him up like this, she can put him to bed." He slumped down on the sofa next to her, tossing the baby monitor on the coffee table. "What are we watching tonight?"

" _Hook_."

" _Hook_ is for kids."

"It's a good movie. Good movies are good at any age."

"Says the woman who thinks _Police Academy 2_ is the pinnacle of comedy."

"Shush."

He fell silent and they watched the movie quietly for a few minutes, but Malfoy never did silence for long.

"No book tonight?" he asked.

 _War and Peace_ was lying on the table. Hermione had brought it with her, but had so far not managed to muster the motivation to open it, so it was just lying there, a nagging reminder that she was neglecting a masterpiece penned by one of the greatest literary minds of all time in favour of a movie where Robin Williams wore tights, thus bringing dishonour on herself, on her family and possibly on all the other Hermiones in all the other realities. That was an achievement of sorts, right?

She sunk lower on the sofa.

"No book tonight." Dishonour it was. All the other Hermiones would just have to deal. _Hook_ was funny and charming, and Robin Williams was _delightful_. _War and Peace_ would keep.

There was silence after that, and Hermione slowly relaxed — Tolstoi, her parents and the wrath of a thousand other Hermiones forgotten in the familiar paces of a movie that she had seen often enough that it had become comforting and soothing, like a lullaby.

She glanced at Malfoy and realised he had fallen asleep at some point, his head back against the sofa, his lips slightly parted. She couldn't help but smile fondly at the sight.

"Go to bed," she said, and his eyes flew open.

"Not asleep." His words were slightly slurred, and he ran his tongue over his lips in a gesture that should not have been as attractive as it was.

"Yes, you are."

"Lies." He closed his eyes again, either too lazy or too stubborn to get up.

"You realise I'll just leave you here all night and let your neck decide he hates you come morning, right?"

"Shush, there's a movie on." He laid down with his feet over the arm of the sofa and his head on her lap.

"What are you even doing right now?" she asked, half amused, half alarmed.

"Allaying your concerns over the welfare of my neck. 'Cause I'm swell like that." His voice trailed off, and Hermione smiled, resigning herself to the terrible trial that was having Draco Malfoy use her for a pillow. Unable to help herself, she carded her fingers through his hair and he hummed appreciatively.

Malfoy was nothing but trouble, and Hermione had no problem admitting it to herself, even if she would never have admitted it to anyone else. The Draco Malfoy she had known before — the one who gave her a headache every time he decided to honour Charlie's pub with his oh-so-generous patronage — was a spoilt, demanding, entitled git, whose education would have greatly benefited from hearing the word "no" a little more often. He was still all those things, of course, but it was harder to remember that while listening to him sing Scorpius to sleep at night, or when he dragged her out of the house and out of her head on days when the whole world existed in nothing but shades of grey.

It was harder to remember it just then, with his head on her lap, his hair silky and soft between her fingers.

Draco, who was so often abrasive and caustic and harsh, was also sometimes kind and sometimes thoughtful, and always far more charming than was good for her peace of mind.

Hermione could have lived a happy life without ever finding out that Draco Malfoy had hidden depths.


	7. Family Business

Hermione would have rolled her eyes at the mere suggestion that Draco had ever led anything resembling a hard life, but that was not to say he hadn't faced his fair share of challenges and hardships. He was an orphan, for crying out loud. Deprived of the guiding hand of his parents at an impressionable young age and left to fend for himself against an army of nannies and tutors and his aunt Bellatrix, whose only saving grace was that for the most part she was happy to leave him to the army of nannies and tutors.

He was hounded — hounded! — by a hostile press that took perverse pleasure in chronicling his misadventures. And one time a snotty, stuck-up version of himself had showed up in his world and kidnapped him from a perfectly good private party, only to have the nerve to call him a bloody disgrace on top of it.

Yes, Draco knew all about hardships, but nothing in his life had prepared him for the true test to his character that was trying to make a baby eat his soup if he was disinclined to do so.

"Look, Scorpius, it's a plane. Here comes the plane."

But Scorpius was left unmoved by either aviation, mashed vegetables or pleas, and as it turned out, he was able to levitate pureed food just as easily as anything else.

"Scorpius Malfoy, we do not play with our food in this household," he said, tapping the back of the plastic spoon against the nose of the baby, who had the nerve to laugh at him, the cheeky monkey. "Dobbson, I better not have heard you snicker just now."

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir."

"We do not play with our food in this household?" Granger was definitely snickering — damn her to hell. "Turn this way." She tilted his face towards her and wiped his cheek with a kitchen towel. "The food is for him to eat, not for you to wear."

"You look very amused for a woman who had to Google what to feed a seven-month-old."

"A little research never harmed anyone." She let go of him, and he reminded himself that the part of him that mourned the loss of her fingers on his skin was at least sixty per cent Other Draco. At least forty five per cent Other Draco.

"Ma'am, you asked me to remind you of the time."

"Right, I have to go." She kissed the top of Scorpius's head. "Be good. I'm working tonight. I'll be home late."

She made to walk past Draco's chair, but he grabbed her arm. "You can't just abandon me here."

"I have classes."

"I have a baby who refuses to eat his lunch."

"We all have our crosses to bear."

"Dobbson, I need coffee on an IV drip." Blaise walked into the kitchen, never looking away from the book he was reading.

"Will a cup suffice, sir?"

"I suppose it'll have to do." He looked up then. "Granger, some sort of Weasley is waiting outside in a monstrosity that might have been roadworthy at one point or another, though I sincerely doubt it. Kindly go get him to move it before I have it towed."

"Going."

Draco only realised he was staring after her when he felt Blaise's gaze on him.

"I don't know what you're doing," Blaise said, turning his attention back to his book. "But you're a fool."

Very likely.

There was a line in his mind between the things Other Draco had put in it and the things that belonged there, and he knew where that line was. As long as he knew where the line was, it was not a problem.

Really.

Just then his phone started vibrating on the table. Draco flinched when he saw the caller ID. Nothing good ever came from taking Snapes's calls.

"Are you going to take that?" Blaise asked.

No. No, he wasn't. Because he might be a fool, but he wasn't an idiot, and his avoidance skills were legendary. The phone fell silent again and he heaved a sigh of relief.

"Guess they gave up," he said, scooping another spoonful of soup. "A terrible pity, I'm sure." He smiled as Scorpius made a face at the taste. Just then the phone started vibrating again. Rolling his eyes, Draco picked up. "What?" The voice on the other end was low and steady and entirely unwelcome. "I can't. No, look— Yes, I know, but—" He ground his teeth, cursing himself for taking the call. "Fine. I said fine; what do you want from me? I'll be there in a couple of hours." He hung up, repressing the urge to throw the bloody contraption at a wall. "I'm going to London," he said to Blaise, getting up. "I need you to babysit."

"And I need not to receive all the Weasleys in the country. I dare say we're both bound for disappointment."

Draco put his phone on his back pocket and nudged Scorpius's cheek with a finger before heading for the door.

"Call Lovegood if you run into trouble."

"Malfoy, don't you dare walk out that door." But walk out he did, and Dobbson, with the sort of well-honed instincts that had kept him sane in his many years of service, had made himself scarce. Blaise sighed, aggravated. "Well, I suppose one ought not to leave your education entirely in the hands of philistines," Blaise said to the Scorpius, sitting down on the chair Draco had vacated. "We'll start with the basics. Food shouldn't fly off the spoon. We're not barbarians." The baby opened his mouth and Blaise spooned in the vile concoction that someone had decided was suitable food for children.

* * *

It was almost 3 a.m. when Draco made it back to the house. It had been an exhausting, infuriating beast of a day, and he was in a foul mood. He had been in and out of meetings all day, followed by more meetings, followed by a supremely uncomfortable dinner with Snape and Bellatrix, whose loathing for each other somehow did not stop them banding together to urge him to take a closer interest in the running of Malfoy Enterprises and stop horsing around as if he were still sixteen years old. He had duties, he had responsibilities, and he was no longer a child. And if he did not intend to stop being a disgrace to his name, would he at least consider taking Tom Riddle back as CEO?

That last comment had been Bellatrix's, and it might have been more than a little awkward, considering Severus was the current CEO of ME, but the older man merely rolled his eyes as she carried on about how Riddle was an intelligent, competent, brilliant man who had always done well by him and by the company.

Right up to the part where he fucked his girlfriend.

Draco had let them both talk, knowing full well that there was no point in arguing. They'd say their piece and then he'd leave and go back to ignoring them as he always had.

He would never understand what had possessed his parents to name them his guardians. Neither one had ever had any liking for the role, or for each other, or any interest in caring for a difficult, angry little boy who had never learnt how to deal with loss except by breaking everything within reach. They had never had much interest in his welfare, not until he was old enough that he didn't need or want them to.

They didn't own him, either one of them. Not Bellatrix with her constant demands, and not Severus with his silent disapproval. He was who he was — because of them, and in spite of them — and if they didn't like it they could go fuck themselves.

The house was dark and silent as he made his way upstairs. He paused by Scorpius's door, but there was no sound. There was light under the door of his study, and he could hear the muffled sound of the television, but he did not stop, heading straight for his bedroom. He was no fit company tonight. The way he had driven back from London, it was a stroke of extraordinary good luck that he had neither been arrested nor ended up in a ditch, but even that had not been enough to spend all the nervous energy that still made him want to put his fist through a wall. He'd try that, but he suspected the wall might win.

Closing the door behind him, he quickly unbuttoned his shirt, balling it up and tossing it at the hamper in the corner. He missed, and that seemed fitting. Such was his life. One fucking miss after another.

He looked around, wishing he had had the foresight to bring a bottle of whiskey up. It was a night for drinking. It was a night for drinking a lot.

A knock on the door made him turn around.

"What?"

Hermione peeked in. "Everything alright?"

"Everything's fucking dandy," he said, just a little too loud.

She quirked an eyebrow at the outburst and walked all the way into the room, closing the door behind her and putting down the baby monitor on the dresser.

"What happened?"

"What business is that of yours?" He didn't need to see her flinch to know he was being a jerk, but knowing he was being a jerk had never before stopped him being one. "Piss off, Granger. Some of us actually sleep at night, and that's what I intend to do."

Hermione, to her credit, did not back down.

"I was just worried. When you didn't come home—"

"It's not your fucking home." Man, he was on fire tonight. "This isn't your home. We're not a family. This isn't a thing that's happening. We're not _them_." He only realised he had been moving forward when her back hit the door, and suddenly they were standing far too close to each other. "But maybe you wish we were." He cupped the the back of her neck, his thumb ghosting over the hollow of her throat. "Maybe what's keeping you up at night is the thought of the things I would do to you if we were." His hand moved lower, his fingers following the curve of her neckline over her breasts, and Hermione sucked in a breath.

"Are you quite done being an asshole?" she asked, her voice steady despite the blush on her cheeks.

His hand paused for a moment and then he dropped it, moving back. Yes. Yes, he was. For the moment at least, though knowing him that was unlikely to last.

"I'm sorry," he said, the words unfamiliar on his tongue. He sat down on the bed, leaning forward, his arms propped up on his legs. He was so used to people calling him a disgrace — Bellatrix, his holier-than-thou double, the press, both foreign and domestic — that he didn't even notice anymore, but an argument could be made that they weren't totally wrong.

The bed dipped next to him and Hermione's hand came to rest on the back of his neck, her thumb rubbing slow, steady circles in a soothing pattern, and some of the tension bled out of him.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and he had no real answer for it.

"It was just a bad day. Family crap and business crap…" He glanced at her, adding with a rueful smile, "And it may have escaped your notice, but I'm not always a very nice person."

"I've been serving you drinks at the White Hart for over two years. It has not escaped my notice." Her tone was light and teasing, with no real sting to the words. "But you make up for it by being a very good tipper."

He chuckled and she smiled, a soft, fond smile that tugged at parts of him that had very little to do with Other Draco.

"I should have sent a message when I left London. I'm sorry I didn't." It just hadn't occurred to him to do it. He wasn't used to people worrying about his whereabouts.

Hermione shook her head, looking away. "No. You were right; it's none of my business—"

Draco touched a finger to her chin, turning her face towards him. "I _should_ have texted. I'm sorry."

She smiled and nodded, and that should have been it, that should have been his cue to call it a night. But Draco had never known how to quit while he was ahead, and he was not about to start now. He was exhausted, he couldn't even begin to untangle the mess that was his life, and the only thing keeping him sane and grounded just now was the warm pressure of her hand on the back of his neck. Closing the space between them, he kissed her, a soft peck on the lips that was a question and an invitation and a dare, and never before had he wanted so badly for someone to take him up on it. Hermione froze for a moment and he made to move back, but she followed the movement, her lips meeting his, soft and warm, one of her hands tugging at his shirt, and it was all the encouragement he needed. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to him until she climbed on his lap.

He was suddenly hyper-aware of her, of her breasts against his chest, of the pressure of her hips, of her breath on his skin. He fell back on the bed, bringing her down on top of him, before rolling them both so that he was half on top of her. They looked at each other for a moment, both flushed and out of breath.

"This is a really bad idea," Hermione whispered, her gaze dropping from his eyes to his lips and back.

"Extraordinarily bad," he agreed, undoing the button of her jeans with on hand. "The sort of dumb, half-assed—"

Hermione kissed him, wrapping her legs around his waist, and he lost his train of thought, making very little effort to get it back. It was not in Draco's nature to deny himself the things he wanted — he had never had to learn how — and he did not choose to attempt it now. He might live to regret it, but that was a problem for the future. Today was today, and tomorrow would just have to take care of itself.


	8. The Inexorable Decay of Western Civilisa

Hermione did not read tabloid newspapers. Her parents had always been at pains to impart to her a distaste for what they considered to be, at best, a lower form of culture and, at worst, one of the visible signs of the inexorable decay of western civilisation. Charlie did not share their prejudices. In his book, no one's brain had ever rotted from reading the news, even heavily-biased, barely-factual news. Also, he liked gossip. That's why he was the first one to spot her picture on the Daily Mail, under the headline, "HAS LOVE MADE DRACO MALFOY SETTLE DOWN"?

Hermione turned ten different shades of red on seeing the column. Things were weird enough with Malfoy without the Daily-freaking-Mail being something she needed to worry about. Also, her picture was in a national newspaper. Her picture was in a national newspaper next to a story on how Britney Spears was having some sort of nervous meltdown, and she could sympathise, she really could, because the world was a terrifying, complicated, messed up place, and nervous meltdowns were a perfectly reasonable response to it.

She stared at the picture in horror, trying to remember the occasion. It was just outside Nan's — Draco was looking at her and smiling at something she said — and it could have been on any number of occasions. They often went there after class, or met there for lunch, or went there for dinner. They went there a lot and she couldn't pinpoint the exact occasion, and maybe it didn't matter, because there was a picture of her in the Daily Mail, and she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She started reading the article and had to stop, because she was cringing hard enough that she might just hurt herself.

"Burn it," she said, closing it and pushing it away from her. "Shred it, burn it, get rid of it. And not a word of this to Malfoy."

Her Aunt Phyllis always made a big thing of how she read nothing but the classics, and had been known to go on for hours about how humanity had produced nothing worthwhile since the Greeks, but Hermione had once seen a copy of The Sun hidden under a special edition of _The Odyssey_ , and she just knew that if anyone in the family was going to see this disaster it was her, the hateful, gossipy old biddy.

And the idea that Malfoy might see it just made her want to set herself on fire just to avoid the embarrassment. Of all the hare-brained, idiotic ideas she had ever had — and she had done many a stupid thing in her life — sleeping with him might just top the list. And things had been going so well before. They got along, and had fun together, and did a good job taking care of Scorpius. Things had been going great, so of course she had to mess it up somehow, because she was smart like that. And if sleeping together that one time hadn't been bad enough, that was nothing to the fact that they had kept on sleeping together, because they both were people who made really bad life choices.

And they didn't even talk about it, not really. The rest of the time they just carried on as if nothing had happened, because while to the casual observer they might both look like mature, well-adjusted individuals, they clearly weren't, and so they were sleeping together and not talking about it, which was fine. It was perfectly fine. It was perfectly normal, healthy behaviour that she was in no way keeping from her therapist, whose favourite question to anything she disclosed was always, "And how does that make you feel?", and that was not a question she wanted asked, because she didn't know how it made her feel, and what was more, she did not care to enquire too closely.

Her life was an unmitigated disaster and the last thing she needed was the tabloid press and her therapist piling on. Of all the ridiculous, nonsensical things to happen.

Lying in bed at night, her brain kept going at five hundred miles an hour and she was finding it impossible to relax or fall asleep or do anything but just lie there, silently freaking out. She made to get up, but Draco tightened the arm around her waist, brushing his lips against her temple.

"Stay," he said, his words heavy with sleep. "Stay a little while longer."

But she couldn't sleep and she couldn't stay and she was finding it really hard to breathe.

"I need to— I just—" She pushed his arm away and sat up, trying and failing to steady her breathing, which was coming too fast and too hard, and yet she couldn't catch her breath, she couldn't get her lungs to fill, and her heart was beating too fast, and she couldn't control any of it. She couldn't do anything but just sit there, making a spectacle of herself, and why hadn't she just left an hour ago, as she should have, why couldn't she just stop making everything worse all the time?

It was a while before she could feel the warm, steady hand rubbing circles on her back, a while before she could hear Draco's voice close to her ear, telling her everything was fine, everything was okay.

"I'm sorry," she said, wiping her eyes. "I—"

"Get dressed."

She nodded, pushing back the bed covers and trying very hard to ignore the overwhelming feeling of humiliation coiling in the pit of her stomach. She focused on the simple act of putting on clothes instead, on the mechanical movements that didn't require much thought or much effort. Draco caught up with her by the door, grabbing her hand and turning on the doorknob.

"Come on," he said, pulling her after him. He led her to his study and she followed, glad of the contact, glad of the company, relieved that he was still there, though she didn't understand why he was. "Sit," he said, letting go of her hand, and she resisted the urge to cling to him. He paused by one of the shelves and picked up a movie, before popping it into the DVD player. "You can watch subpar comedies on your own time. If I'm picking, I'm going for quality here." It was _The Lion King_. "I'll be right back."

He came back after a few minutes with a tub of cookie dough Ben&Jerry's and two spoons, and sat down on the sofa next to her. "Come here."

"You don't have to stay." It was fine, she was fine, and she had made enough of a fool of herself for one day.

"Yeah, you're not eating all the ice cream by yourself. Get over here already, Granger."

Giving in to the impulse to do just that, Hermione swung her legs up on the sofa and settled against him, her back against his chest. Draco wrapped an arm around her and offered her the ice cream.

"You're holding that," he said. "It's cold and I have sensitive hands."

She turned her face just enough to kiss the side of his jaw. "Thank you."

He turned and kissed her, a soft peck on the lips. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, his breath soft against her skin. She shook her head and he kissed her temple. "Okay."

He was warm and solid against her, and Hermione had never been more grateful for anything in her life. Everything was still a mess, of course, but it was easier to believe, as she watched _The Lion King_ nestled against Draco, that things might just turn out all right. It had been one article. One flimsy article in the middle of a newspaper that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Nothing would come of it.

* * *

"Oh my god, will you guys just let it go?" Hermione dropped her coat on the rack by the entrance before heading for the living room, where Scorpius was playing with building blocks. The few blocks floating around him dropped to the floor when she walked in and the baby laughed and held out his hands to her. "Hello, sweetheart." She picked him up, glad of his solid weight on her arms, real and grounding. "Hi, Fred."

"Hermione, you _have_ to go to the police." Ginny walked in, followed by Ron and Harry.

"I really don't."

"It's harassment," Harry said.

"It's bloody stalking, that's what it is," Ron added.

Fred got up, dropping the book he had been reading. "What happened?"

"Some creepy photographer was taking pictures of Hermione outside the pub. Charlie broke his camera with a cricket bat. Our brother has a cricket bat behind the bar. Make of that what you will."

"Hermione—"

"For the last time, I'm not going to the police. He wasn't breaking any laws. It's a public street. Now can we please drop the subject?"

"Let's not drop it just yet." Hermione bit back a curse, turning towards Draco who was standing by the door. "What exactly happened?"

She shot her friends a warning glance, but Ginny did not take any hints she did not choose to.

"A few days ago there was an article about you two in the Daily Mail."

"Thanks, Ginny," Hermione said, but the other woman ignored her, carrying on.

"And today there was some asshole taking pictures of Hermione across the street from the pub. These people are a bloody menace."

Malfoy stalked towards her, anger rolling off him, but when he spoke his voice was steady and even. "Did it even occur to you to tell me?"

Hermione resisted the urge to look away and held his gaze, saying with a calm she did not feel, "It occurred to me."

He glowered for a moment and she thought he meant to say something else, but at the last moment he just sighed and shook his head. "I'll take care of it," he said, strolling towards the door, his hands in his pockets.

* * *

"Well, what were you expecting?" Blaise swung his chair towards Draco, resigning himself to the fact that no work would get done until he had dealt with this. "You were providing a pretty steady income to a great many deal of people, and as far as they're concerned you just suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Can you really blame them for trying to work with what you're giving them these days?"

"Yes, I bloody well can, and I can't believe you're siding with the freaking tabloids on this, Zabini."

Blaise sighed, feeling a headache coming on. "I'm not siding with the tabloids. I'm saying that you've been stringing them along for years, and if you thought you could put that particular genie back in the bottle whenever it's convenient, then you're a bigger fool than I thought."

"Spare me the fucking lecture." Draco fell on the sofa, throwing a cushion against the opposing wall. "How do I get them to back off of her? Who do I have to pay off?"

"You overestimate my network of contacts." And his ability to work a miracle. "If the tabloid press could be bought off, there would be no one left for gossip columnists to write about."

Draco groaned, leaning his head back against the sofa. "Just tell me how to fix this."

Blaise swung his chair towards the desk and picked up his pen. "Give them something else to write about."

* * *

Hermione had always known that Draco Malfoy did not do relationships. She had known him long enough and been a witness to his many flings for long enough that she knew what the score was. That thing between them, it wasn't a relationship, it was just two people stuck in the same ridiculous situation. Nothing bound them but Scorpius and the fact that somewhere, somehow, some version of them had seen something in each other worth holding on to, despite a war, despite their differences, despite the world going up in flames around them.

It was a beautiful story, but it wasn't theirs, and she had always known that sooner or later Draco would get bored of playing house, get bored of dealing with her problems, and go back to the life he had put on hold.

She had known all along that it would happen, but it still managed to take her by surprise when it did.

There were no more stories in the newspaper, no more photographers following her around. They were all suddenly too busy chronicling Draco's exciting life of debauchery to remember her. She was old news.

They wrote exciting tales of excess and dissoluteness, scandalous stories involving alcohol and drugs and women, and Hermione — who had known better all along, who despite recent evidence to the contrary absolutely had better preservation instincts than that — could not even take comfort from the fact that she had seen it coming. It made her feel like an idiot; it made her feel like a prize fool.

And perhaps it was fitting. Perhaps that's what she had coming to her for being careless enough to fall for a guy like him.

She didn't see him much anymore, except on the pages of newspapers she should have known better than to look at, let alone buy. He was out most of the time, and she tended to avoid him when he was in the house.

She had briefly considered moving back to the dorms, but she wouldn't leave without Scorpius and she couldn't take him, and not just because she couldn't have a baby in her dorm room. She wouldn't do that to Scorpius. She wouldn't do that to Draco, either.

And so she stayed, stuck and miserable and unable to do anything about it.

One morning she went down to the kitchen to find a woman leaning against the counter, drinking coffee and reading a magazine. Hermione did her best to ignore the sudden surge of jealousy and anger burning in her chest, and reminded herself that it was his damn house and he was free to bring to it anyone he saw fit, even if there were those who might consider bringing one of his nightly conquests to the house he shared with his son and the woman he had been sleeping with until just recently to be in poor taste.

Whatever. He could do whatever the bloody hell he wanted. It was no business of hers.

"Good morning," she said, because it was the civil thing to do, and she'd be civil if it killed her.

The woman looked over her magazine with big, green eyes that looked remarkably familiar. "You must be Granger," she said with a smile that some might have described as stunning, but that Hermione was more than happy to think of as no more than adequate. "And this must be my godson."

And just like that, all her jealousy and anger vanished. "You're Pansy Parkinson." It was not a question. She remembered now where she knew the woman from. There was a picture of her, Harry and Scorpius in the baby album.

"In the flesh." The woman smiled at the baby before turning her gaze back up at Hermione. "I've heard a lot about you."

"You shouldn't believe everything Draco says."

"Oh, not from him." She pulled a chair and sat down, crossing her legs. "That one doesn't tell me a thing. Seems to believe I'd just use the information against him. Though where he gets that notion from, I'm sure I don't know. Blaise, on the other hand, has the good sense to call when he's in over his head. Have a sit."

Hermione quirked an eyebrow at the order — for it was that, however light the tone and charming the smile — but sat down across from her anyway, with Scorpius on her lap.

"I've known those two a very long time," Pansy said, conversationally. "Theodore as well. You wouldn't know it by looking at him today, but Theo was a shy little thing when he was a kid, scrawny and timid and eager to please. One time at school, some older boys convinced him that if he wanted to hang out with them, he had to prove himself to them." Scorpius held out a hand in the direction of her magazine and it started moving across the table towards him. "So they had him sneak into Mr Davidson's room — he was the maths teacher — and steal a stuffed monstrosity named Errol. Mr Davidson adored that owl. I understand it was a family heirloom, though what sort of family passes down stuffed owls, I couldn't tell you." Scorpius grabbed the magazine and started chewing on a corner of it. "Someone told, and Theo was taken before the headmaster. Theft is something they take pretty seriously at Harrow, and they would've expelled him, except that somebody else took the fall for it." Her smile widened. "Draco knew where the owl was hidden, got hold of it, made a pile of maths books in the main courtyard, put the owl on top of it, and set the whole thing on fire. I'm told they still tell stories of it today. He was expelled, of course, but I don't think he was terribly concerned about that. Theo adores him to this day."

Hermione stared at her for a moment, this poised woman with a posh accent, who some version of herself had trusted enough to make her son's godmother. "What's your point, Pansy?"

Pansy chuckled, getting up. "No point at all. Except to say that even if he has no shame and less sense, his heart is usually in the right place. I'll see you around."

And with that she left, leaving Hermione even more tied into knots than she had been before.

* * *

It was almost midnight and Hermione was sitting on the staircase, looking at the front door and cursing her own stupidity. Because there was a chance that Draco wasn't coming home tonight, or that he wasn't coming home alone, or that Pansy hadn't been telling her what she thought she had been telling her. There was also the chance that Pansy had been telling her exactly what Hermione thought she had been telling her, but that she had been mistaken.

She didn't know and she couldn't think about it, because the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to chicken out, and she couldn't chicken out because she had decided that if she couldn't be smart about this, then she would be brave and see where that took her.

So she was sitting there. Waiting. Like an idiot.

She sighed, glancing at the grandfather clock in corner. Five more minutes. Five more minutes and she would get up.

Just then a key turned in the lock and Blaise walked in, followed by Draco.

"It's your neck," Blaise was saying. "I'm just asking you to leave me out of it."

"You, sir, lack courage."

"And you, sir, lack common sense."

Malfoy made to say something else, but just then they saw her on stairs. Blaise, knowing when to make himself scarce, gave Draco a look and headed up.

"Goodnight, Granger," he said, walking past her.

"Goodnight, Zabini," she said.

Draco walked up to where she was, and Hermione got up.

"Is everything all right?" he asked, frowning. "Is Scorpius—"

Without giving herself time to think better of it, she leaned forward and kissed him, daring and bold and reckless. He didn't move for one terrifying moment, and then his lips opened under hers, and his hands moved up her arms and around her back.

"I'm not made of glass," she said, her hands buried in his jacket. "And I don't need you to protect me from assholes with cameras."

He looked at her with serious grey eyes before leaning his forehead against hers, his arms tightening around her.

"It was my fault," he said, his voice low and pained. "If I wasn't—"

Hermione tilted her face up, silencing him in the one way sure to work. Draco sighed, leaning into the kiss, and Hermione wasn't scared anymore. Maybe everything was a mess, the both of them along with the rest of it, but just then she wasn't worried. Just then she could have taken on the world.


	9. Malfoy Manor

When everything blew up in their faces, it wasn't the Daily Mail, it was the News of the World, in a two-page spread by one Rita Skeeter under the headline "THE SECRET MALFOY BASTARD, HEIR TO A FORTUNE OF BILLIONS", and Hermione was the first one to see it.

Disregarding Draco's advice to just ignore the tabloids, she had instructed Dobbson to regularly buy a number of different publications, and she'd taken to spending some time each day checking them for any articles that mentioned her. For a few weeks there was nothing of note in any of them and she was starting to relax, and then she saw it.

The main picture took up half a page, and it showed Draco holding a crying Scorpius, and Hermione saying something with a concerned expression, one hand on the baby's back. They had been at the A&E, and it had not even occurred to her to worry about paparazzi there, with a crying baby and surrounded by sick people and incoming emergencies.

"Oh god," she said, reading through the article, which included her full name and the harrowing tale of how Draco Malfoy's latest fling and mother to his love child had a long history of mental illness and had tried to kill herself in a shocking incident that had shaken the small community in which they lived. There was a picture of her lying unconscious in a hospital bed, dried vomit on her gown, and she had never even seen that picture. She hadn't even known it existed.

"What's wrong?" Draco paused at the entrance to the kitchen and she waved him over without looking away from the newspaper.

According to the masterly, well-researched piece of journalism in front of her, she had tried to kill herself when Draco had refused to acknowledge the baby and left her for some rich heiress who had in the meantime broken up with him over the whole illegitimate child debacle.

"I'm going to murder that woman," Draco said. "I'm going to sue that fucking rag. I am going to put them out of business."

A detached part of Hermione's brain knew that she ought to talk him down, but she was far too busy thinking that she could never again show her face outside the house for as long as she lived. The article, which described her as an "unstable, ambitious young woman who had known how to ensure her future by means some might consider rather unscrupulous, to say nothing of incredibly cliched", went on to speculate that even if Draco didn't marry her, the child was still set to inherit a considerable fortune, to say nothing of the money she would no doubt receive for his education. That was, of course, if she didn't completely lose it in the meantime, and was it right that such a clearly disturbed person be in charge of a young child? It was not the place of the writer to speculate, of course, but one had to wonder.

"Hey, look at me." He cupped her face with his hands, urging her head up. "Say the word and I'll put a hit on that hack. I can. I'm exceedingly rich and Blaise knows people."

Hermione forced herself to smile, but there was something else nagging at her. "If they look into Scorpius—"

"They won't."

"But if they do."

"If they do, they won't find anything they shouldn't. Come here." He pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. "Between Skeeter and Blaise, my money is on Blaise. I'd stake my fortune on the fact that she won't find a damn thing. Not that she'll look, mind you. Rita Skeeter was never one to let a good story be polluted by facts. She'll write a few more pieces, get her hands on a few more photos, and then find someone else to harass. In fact, what we'll do is get out of town until this whole circus dies down. Dobbson!" he called. "I don't know why I pay him. He's never where he's supposed to be. Dobb—"

"You bellowed, sir?"

"Draco, we can't just go. It's the middle of term. We have—"

"We can and we will. The university won't go anywhere. It's been here for the past five hundred years."

"But—"

"Just for a couple of weeks until things settle down," he said. Hermione hesitated. Running away was more than a little cowardly, but the thought of facing her teachers and colleagues filled her with dread. She glanced at the picture of her in the hospital gown and nodded. Sometimes discretion was the better part of valour. It was all the agreement Draco needed. "Dobbson, we're going down to Wiltshire. I want the house prepared."

"Sir, there's no full-time staff at the manor. I'm not sure—"

"We'll be there in three hours. Make it happen."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

Malfoy Manor was a grand old house surrounded by acres and acres of land, which included the stunning English gardens closer to the house, and miles of forest farther away from it. The estate was encircled by a wall, on top of which security cameras ensured that no one trying to make it over would do so unobserved. Should anyone be foolish enough to attempt it, the security staff was usually quick to show them the error of their ways and persuade them to make better life choices going forward.

It had been the Malfoy seat for generations, but Draco had not lived there in the years since his parents' death. As a child he had spent most of his time at school, and the holidays in Bellatrix's house in London, while she traipsed around Europe trying very hard to find new and inventive ways to spend her husband's money and that of her ward. It was exhausting business, and one to which she devoted considerable time and effort.

Even as an adult he had never spent much time there. Draco did not have many memories of his parents — he had been very young when they died — but the few he did have were in that house. He remembered his mother walking with him in the gardens. He remembered his father putting him to bed. He remembered sneaking into the kitchen with Pansy and stealing half a dozen cupcakes left to cool on the table. Dobbson had not been impressed. His mother had looked very serious when told of his transgression and had promptly agreed that Draco must receive some sort of punishment. After all, it would not do for the Malfoy heir to go around stealing cupcakes. And then Dobbson had turned his back, and she had winked at Draco, and it was like the sun was back in the sky.

For many years he had thought of the house like a mausoleum — filled with silence and ghosts and the memory of the dead. The memories were still there, and ghosts still stared at him from paintings and photographs that showed moments frozen in time, but there was no amount of silence that could survive Scorpius. The little boy chattered and blabbed and prattled all day long in a language only he could understand — at Draco, at Hermione, at whatever maid or footman happened to walk by — and it seemed fitting, in a way, it seemed proper that there was once again a baby in the house, another Malfoy in a line that went back hundreds of years."

"We're going for a walk," Hermione said, she and Scorpius wrapped up in warm winter jackets. "Wanna come?"

Hermione looked more relaxed than he had ever seen her, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Maybe it was the fact that the world seemed a little farther away in the middle of the English countryside, or that they didn't deliver newspapers at the manor. Whatever it was, he wanted nothing more than to keep that expression on her face, that easy smile that turned into an easy laugh at whatever bad joke he happened to stumble upon. He'd pay a king's ransom to keep her smiling like that.

"It's February. You'll catch your death. And don't expect me to put much effort in recovering your bodies, either. I'll leave you to the wolves."

"It's a beautiful, sunny day, and there are no wolves in England."

"I'll be sure to inform the search party of that." He turned his attention back to his PSP, unpausing the game, but it suddenly flew off his hands and up in the air. "Oi," he said, jumping to his feet and catching it before it could get very far. "That is cheating."

"What is cheating?" Hermione asked innocently. Scorpius, who tended to prefer shameless to innocent, simply giggled and clapped his hands.

"You know perfectly well what, you fiend. Fine, I'll go, but I'm doing so under duress." He slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her, his smile turning into a chuckle when Scorpius started poking the side of his face. "I saw her first, mister," he said, planting a kiss on the baby's head.

* * *

"Explain to me again why it's my turn to change him," Draco said, moving Scorpius to his other arm and holding the door for her. "I feel like it's my turn more than it should be."

"Nonsense." Hermione took off Scorpius's jacket, before taking off her own and putting them on the rack by the door. "It's your turn the exact amount of times it should be."

"Yeah, I don't feel like that's right."

"Would I lie to you?"

"Yes."

She laughed at his look of mock outrage and grabbed his jacket, pulling him to her and kissing him. "I'll make it worth your while," she said, her tone low and suggestive.

"Are you trying to trick me with your feminine wiles?"

"Yes. Is it working?"

"Yes. Damn you. Let's go, Scorpius. Women are the devil."

"Thank you," she shouted after him, still laughing. Stretching her arms over her head, Hermione headed for the drawing room. It had been easy to get lost in the first few days, but she had since learnt her way around. Bradford House was no cottage, but Malfoy Manor was absolutely massive — all of it high ceilings and large rooms and wide staircases. Hermione liked the gravitas of it, the sense of history. Most of it, she liked that despite all that, it still felt like a family home.

She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the woman in the middle of the drawing room. The stranger stood very straight in an elegant red and white outfit, her hair a mass of dark ringlets that cascaded down her back. She was staring out the window, but turned to face her when Hermione walked in.

"Well, well, well," she said, her voice clear, with a ring like glass. "You must be the trollop."


	10. The Witch

Bellatrix Lestrange looked older and less polished than the stunning dark beauty Hermione had seen in one of the portraits on the south gallery, but it was unmistakably her.

"Mrs Lestrange," she said by way of greeting, relieved to find her voice steady. "Had we known you were coming, we would not have gone out. Were you offered anything to drink?"

The woman let out a roar of laughter that sent a shiver down Hermione's back. "You have nerve, girl. I'll give you that." She circled Hermione, looking her up and down with piercing dark eyes. "To think that I should be offered a refreshment in my sister's house by the likes of you."

Hermione saw Dobbson — who had followed a few days after them — stop at the door and quietly retreat.

"Maybe you'd prefer to talk to Dra—"

"Oh no, little girl, my business is with you." She was standing too close now, and Hermione resisted the urge to put some space between them. "I don't know who you think you are, but I won't have this family's good name besmirched by some clever little hussy whose only accomplishment was to spread her legs and pop out a brat that may not even be my nephew's."

Hermione balled up her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms, trying to keep breathing and trying to remain calm. There were many things that kept her up at night, but this horrid, rude, entitled harpy would not be one of them. She didn't care whose aunt she was.

"Ma'am," she said, because she'd been brought up to respect her elders, even elders such as she, "I think it's best if you just wait for your nephew to come down and have this conversation with him." She made to move away, but Bellatrix grabbed her arm, fingers like claws digging into her.

"You'll go when I give you leave to do so." Hermione tried to shake her arm free, but the woman tightened the grip. "You and I are going to have a nice little chat about what will happen if you don't take that bastard of yours and disappear."

"And what would that be, Aunt?" Draco walked in, carrying Scorpius, Dobbson two steps behind him. Bellatrix let go of Hermione, her gaze focusing on the baby.

"So that's the little mongrel," she said, taking a step towards him, but Hermione stepped between them.

"That's close enough." Every instinct she had was screaming at her to keep that despicable woman away from her kid.

"You'll let this _woman_ talk to me like this?" Bellatrix's face was a grimace, her voice shrill and indignant. "In this house? My sister's house?"

"All things considered, I think she's shown incredible restraint."

"You've always been an ungrateful, spoilt brat, but I thought you had better sense than this. To let some nobody con you with the oldest trick in the book. Have you no shame? No respect for the family name? Are you so bent on destroying everything your parents left you that you'll stoop this low? My poor sister must be rolling in her grave."

"That's quite enough." Hermione hadn't even noticed she was moving until Bellatrix backed away, as surprised as she was. "You are not welcome here. Dobbson, show her out."

"How dare you?" Bellatrix took another step towards her, but Hermione stood her ground. "Who do you think you are? You're the flavour of the month, girl, and you're a fool if you think otherwise."

"Aunt, get out."

"Ma'am, if you would—"

The sound of the slap echoed in the room, and Scorpius started to cry. Her nails left ugly scratch marks on Dobbson's face.

"Remember your place, lackey. Next time you touch me, I'll claw your eyes out."

"Hermione, take the baby," Draco said, but Hermione was too worked up even to hear. There was nothing she could do about Skeeter, or the tabloids, or the fact that she was so behind on her school work she wanted to cry, but she would be damned if she was going to put up with that inexcusable behaviour for one moment more.

"Get the hell out of this house," she said, shoving Bellatrix with both hands. "He won't hit you back, but I will, so don't even try me, you fucking bitch."

Bellatrix's smile was maniac and mad and terrifying. "Oh my, the kitten has claws. Think they are any match to mine? See how well he likes you when I've cut your pretty face into ribbons."

She lunged towards Hermione, but the contact never came.

"Stupefy!"

Bellatrix went flying through the air, hitting the ground with a thud, and everyone turned towards the other end of the room where two robed figures stood, wands aimed at the fallen woman. Hermione's heart dropped and all the anger and adrenaline left her, leaving only panic in their place.

Other Draco put away his wand, shaking his head.

"If I had used that on a Muggle, you'd have had my head for it."

Other Hermione stared at Bellatrix's still form, her expression dark and stormy. "For her, I'm making an exception."

Hermione crossed to where Draco was, away from them, away from that woman, who fought wars and could do magic and wore her face. She held out her hands for Scorpius, who went to her as he always did — trusting and happy and unaware that she wasn't the real thing, just a lesser copy.

Draco's hand was warm and steady on the small of her back, a familiar, comforting gesture that couldn't change a thing.

"You found her," he said to the other Draco, whose smile was bright and triumphant and a little smug.

"I said I would, didn't I?"

Other Hermione walked up to her with slow, deliberate steps, her gaze never leaving Scorpius, who looked in amazement at the two sets of parents that were suddenly in the room. She raised a hand to touch the baby and hesitated, dropping it again.

"I never thought I'd see him again," she said with a strained smile. "I thought they'd kill me well before that." Other Hermione's gaze met Hermione's and it was like looking in a mirror that was just a little off. "I thought they'd kill me and my child would be all alone. I wasn't sure whether Draco had made it out. Everything that happened at Gringotts was such a blur, and I wasn't sure— And even if he had made it out, I knew he was just mad enough to come after me and get himself killed."

Other Draco chuckled, draping an arm over her shoulders and kissing her temple. "It takes more than a few curses to take down a Malfoy."

Other Hermione shot him a look that was part reproach and part amusement, and all affection. "Nothing they did to me," she continued, crossing her arms over her chest, "was worse than the thought he might be alone. That we'd be gone, and he'd be waiting for us, and we'd never come back, and he wouldn't understand why." She was crying now, and Hermione wished she could too. "So I want you to understand that when I say I have no words to express how grateful I am that you took him in, I really mean that." Hermione nodded, unable to reply. She didn't want her gratitude. The one thing she wanted from her, she couldn't have. "May I?" Other Hermione asked in a voice that sounded almost, but not quite like hers, holding out her hands towards the baby in her arms.

And Hermione didn't want to let go. She didn't want to give him up to this woman who'd just take him away. Her arms tightened around the baby and the thought crossed her mind that she could just hold on. She could just hold on and keep him there. Somehow. It was a mad, fleeting thought, and she knew better. He wasn't hers. She'd known that all along. Hermione kissed his temple, memorising the way he smelled, the way he felt on her arms, committing him to memory.

"Goodbye, my darling," she said, her voice thick with tears.

Draco wrapped his arms around them both and for a moment time seemed to stand still, and then it was over all too soon.

Draco let go, and Hermione did too, handing Scorpius over to his parents — the real ones, the ones he belonged with. And if Hermione hated them just a little bit, she could live with that.

"Thank you," Other Hermione said, her smile bright even through the tears. "Really. Thank you."

Hermione nodded in acknowledgement, crossing her arms to stop from reaching for the baby. He wasn't hers. He had never been hers. And now the time had come for him to go home.

"Would you like me to handle her?" Other Draco pointed at Bellatrix with a look of distaste on his face.

"Yes," her Draco said without bothering to ask what exactly that entailed. Other Draco pointed his wand at the woman, whispering, "Obliviate," followed by something else Hermione did not catch, and Bellatrix disappeared, leaving nothing behind to show she had ever been there, save for the marks on Dobbson's face.

For his part, the butler remained as unflappable as ever. He had too often witnessed Scorpius's disregard for the law of gravity to be terribly shocked by the fact that there were now two of his employer.

"We have to go," Other Draco said, an arm thrown protectively around Other Hermione's shoulders. "We can never thank you enough for your help."

"We really can't," Other Hermione said.

Hermione could say nothing to this, could say nothing at all. Her heart was breaking and all she could do was stare as they disappeared. The last thing she saw was Scorpius's smiling face.

The silence stretched in the large drawing room and Hermione could not even cry, because if she started, she'd never stop. She focused instead on her breathing, counting the breaths, focusing on that one mechanical thing. Dobbson discreetly left and it was just her and Draco, and neither of them had any words left. And Hermione did not even know what it meant for them. She didn't know what they were anymore, now that Scorpius wasn't there.

"I—" She cleared her throat. "I'm going to put his things away." That was good. That was a practical thing that she could do. "We should let everyone know." They hadn't even got to say goodbye — Ron, and Harry, and Ginny, and everyone else who'd played with, and taken care of, and babysat Scorpius all those weeks — and she couldn't think about that either. There was just so much heartbreak she could take.

"I'll call them." Draco's tone was even and detached, his movements steady as he reached for his phone.

Hermione nodded and made for the door, her mind on auto-pilot. _One step in front of the other. Keep breathing. And whatever you do, don't cry._

She was almost at the door when a loud crash made her swing around. Draco had smashed his phone against the wall and was now staring at its shattered remains, his shoulders shaking, his hands balled into fists. And Hermione — who had almost made it to the door without shedding a single tear, who had almost managed to keep herself together long enough to fall apart in solitude — she crossed the room back to him, tears falling down her face and sobs rising in her throat. She threw her arms around him and hid her face on his chest, trying to muffle the violence of a grief that she couldn't choke back anymore.

Draco didn't move for a moment, and then he wrapped his shaking arms around her and buried his face on her neck, holding her tight enough to hurt, but she didn't want him to let go. Right then, he was the only thing keeping her from falling into a pile on the floor.

They stayed like that for a very long time, clinging to each other, taking what comfort they could from one another.

"Come on," Draco said after a while, grabbing her hand and pulling her after him.

"Where?"

"My father's study. That's where all the good booze is."

"Alcohol is a terrible coping mechanism," she said, following anyway. Her therapist would not approve.

"Yes, it is," he agreed. "Tomorrow we'll find a better one. Today we're getting drunk."

And so they drank well into the night, sitting by the fire in Lucius Malfoy's old study, Hermione nestled in Draco's lap. She wasn't sure whether the alcohol helped or not, but she was glad of the company and of the contact. She was glad of the warm, familiar arms around her. She was glad of the lips ghosting over her temple, of the soft breath on her skin.

"You should stay," Draco said, fingers trailing up and down her arm. "At Bradford House. You should stay."

"I don't think Blaise would approve."

"Promise him you'll keep bringing Lovegood around and he might just ask you to move in himself."

Hermione chuckled. She tilted her face up to look at him and Draco kissed her nose.

"Ask me again tomorrow," she said. "When you're sober. Ask me again tomorrow."

"I will."

They were silent for a few seconds and then Hermione asked, "If there's an infinite number of us in an infinite number of universes, do you think he exists in more of them?"

Draco tightened his arms around her. "I hope so."

She hoped so too.

 **The End**

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 **AN:** That's all folks! I hope you enjoyed the story :) Thank you so much for all the favourites, and follows, and reviews. I suck at replying to them, but please know that I appreciate every single one of them. You always make my day :)


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